Some Things to Talk About

The Library Company of Philadelphia is pleased to announce it has started work with artist-in-residence Teresa Jaynes on Talking with the Fingers in the Language of the Eyes (working title), a  multimedia exhibition generously funded by The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. The exhibition, developed under the auspices of the Library’s Visual Culture Program, will explore historical embossed and raised-letter documents for the visually impaired as a starting point for a multi-sensory exploration of the nature of perception.

Jaynes, an installation and book artist, uses literature, visual material, and artifacts to create works with a historical context that are both engaging and thought provoking. The Library Company’s diverse visual culture collections related to the history of the education of the blind, including raised printed texts and ephemera; nineteenth-century personal narratives and textbooks; and reports, pamphlets, and magazines issued by educational institutions for the blind will inform the conceptualization of the themes of Talking to open in February 2016.

Additionally, the beginning of the year has seen a few classes studying visual culture make their way to the Library, including the Hussian School of Art’s Graphic Design History Class.

Image: Raised-printed leaf of music in First Annual Report of the Managers of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind (Philadelphia, 1834).