Read an overview of Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures and how it’s redefining the concept of handmade paper—by both exploring different cultural traditions and demonstrating how those traditions are being pushed forward by contemporary artists.

Hear from curators Tia Blassingame and Stephanie Sauer on why they started interrogating the definition of paper, and why bark, cloth, and pottery qualify. The show upends expectations while shining a spotlight on traditions that have been systemically erased.

“A handmade sheet of paper the size of a trailer. Rubbery-looking fauna. Intricate basketlike weavings,” lists the article to illustrate the assertion that Paper Is People is rethinking the definition of paper.

Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures is an Editor Pick alongside Carla Christenson’s solo glass show at Foci. Read about the impact of our limited understanding of paper and how this show broadens that definition by displaying Hawaiian kapa, Mexican acate, Indigenous paper basket-weaving, birch bark biting, and more.

MCBA and its bookmaking studio was included on this list of museum tours, art classes, and other excursions, indoor and outdoor, to get teams interacting in fun and interesting ways outside of the workplace in the Twin Cities.

Find out what these paper cast bottles, cans, glasses, and jars represent to artist Sun Young Kang in her new installation, In Between Presence and Absence: The Illusionary Reality.

Learn more about Corinne Teed and how they plan to spend their McKnight Fellowship year. Corinne is an Assistant Professor in the Art department at the University of Minnesota.

Minnesota Center for Book Arts is pleased to present our 2022 McKnight Book Artist Fellows, Corinne Teed and CB Sherlock, in a public panel alongside the visiting arts professionals working with them throughout their fellowship year.

Jenna Ross of the Minneapolis Star Tribune draws a beautiful portrait of our new Hebrew, Spanish, and Arabic wood type and what it means to its practitioners. Hear from the people involved in its production and learn about our plans for future projects!

MCBA Executive Director Elysa Voshell participates in an online conversation with a number of photographers, publishers and designers about the nature of the photobook. 

Get up to speed on MCBA’s reopening activities with this brief article by a pair of East Coast journalists who started Minnevangelist, a site devoted to spreading the gospel of Minnesota’s greatness after embarking on an exhaustive 16-month, 40-state, 229-city search for a new hometown.

Learn how to view Solastalgia virtually and in person, what it means, and hear the inspiration behind individual artworks in the show—complete with quotes from participating artists, curator Torey Erin and Executive Director Elysa Voshell. 

In this roundup of art news, meet Mary Hark and Sonja Peterson, winners of the 2021 McKnight Fellowships for Book Artists, both of whom work with paper. Learn a little history about the McKnight Artist Fellowships program, too.

Hear perspectives from the MN arts community, including our very own Elysa Voshell, about the essential nature of arts organizations and the need for state art funding. Long-time MCBA Artist Collective member and teaching artist Regula Russelle also reflects on why she’s grown to enjoy online teaching.

Liv Martin speaks with Evanston, Illinois-based artist Ben Blount about his installation of 148 black-and-white prints at MCBA, each one displaying a different truth about how white supremacy operates in the world. With their straightforward language, these prints are rooted in the tradition of protest movements and printmaking. MCBA’s Director of Exhibitions & Artist Programs, Torey Erin, relays the positive reactions of onlookers.

Artist and letterpress printer Ben Blount describes the brainstorming process and intention behind his powerful print installation, Eyes Wide Shut. Read about why the use of the phrase “white supremacy” has increased in recent years, why Ben prefers its directness to “racism,” and how MCBA wants to increase accountability in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis and the white supremacist mob that attacked the Capitol.

Coincidentally installed just five days after the white supremacist insurrection at the Capitol, Ben Blount’s print show, Eyes Wide Shut, is timelier than ever. Read about an earlier version of Ben’s exhibition mounted in his current hometown of Evanston, Illinois, and how plans for the current installation in MCBA’s street-facing windows expanded over time. 

With a photograph by Rochester-based photographer Joshua Rashaad McFadden, the New York Times featured our VOTE print installation on Open Book’s front windows in the midst of the 2020 presidential election. Prints are by MCBA Studio Technician Molly Poganski.

Elysa Voshell, Executive Director here at MCBA, is also an outstanding book artist. Read about how she first got involved with book arts and why she finds the art form so compelling, as well as how MCBA makes artmaking accessible to the Twin Cities community and beyond.

Jenna Ross sheds light on our inaugural McKnight Fellowships for Book Artists award by speaking with fellowship winners, Paula McCartney and Lisa Nebenzahl. Both artists use photography and paper to examine their worlds and unfold something new.