Transforming the Ordinary: Women in American Book Cover Design with Angela Waldron

This talk will take place online via Zoom at 2 p.m. Eastern Time

The presentation Transforming the Ordinary: Women in American Book Cover Design examines the heyday of book cover design from the 1890s through the 1930s, a time of great artistic experimentation influenced by the aesthetics of Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement.  During this period, women created thousands of book cover designs for the mass market, from simple one-color stamped designs to more elaborate multi-color designs, some which were stunningly beautiful works of art in and of themselves.  Organized by Registrar Angela Waldron and accompanied by a limited-edition catalogue, the decorative covers featured in the exhibition are drawn primarily from the Farnsworth Library’s collection and include some of the best known and most prolific cover designers of the period, such as Margaret Armstrong, Amy Sacker, Bertha Stuart, Sarah Wyman Whitman, and a group known as The Decorative Designers. 

Farnsworth Registrar Angela Waldron has been with the museum since 1998. In addition to managing the collection, she has curated or co-curated over ten exhibitions, including The Art of the Book, the first-ever exhibition drawn from the library collection, Art of Disaster, On a Mountain in Maine, and Transforming the Ordinary: Women in American Book Cover Design, currently on view and accompanied by a limited-edition catalogue. She contributed to the exhibition and catalogue for The Shakers: From Mount Lebanon to the World and more recently, Maine and American Art at the Farnsworth published by Rizzoli Electa. She received her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Maine, Orono, Maine.

Cost: $10; members free