{"id":1301,"date":"2019-07-17T16:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/gallery\/?post_type=exhibit&p=1301"},"modified":"2025-01-13T17:51:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T17:51:24","slug":"sackner","status":"publish","type":"exhibit","link":"https:\/\/www.lib.uiowa.edu\/gallery\/exhibit\/sackner\/","title":{"rendered":"Sackner Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In June 2019, the University of Iowa announced that the University Libraries had been chosen as the new home of the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, the most comprehensive such collection in the world. To celebrate the opening of this important collection to the public and to introduce Iowans and the university community to the vast and impressive range of resources held in the Sackner Archive, from artists\u2019 books to reference works to large-scale works of visual poetry, an inaugural exhibition featuring a few highlights from the collection held in the Main Library Gallery from Aug. 24\u2013Dec. 18, 2020.<\/p>\n

Besides demonstrating the remarkable artistry and diversity of some of the most significant poet-artists of the past hundred years, the exhibition brings to light some of the many ways the collection can support teaching and research at the university.<\/p>\n

<\/i> Contact Sackner Archive<\/a> <\/i> Sackner Exhibit Guide (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/i> View the Sackner Archive<\/i> virtual exhibit<\/a><\/p>\n

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See the complete\u00a0Sackner Archive <\/em>LibGuide<\/a> for additional information and resources related to the exhibition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

View the full length documentary about Marvin and Ruth Sackner<\/a> by Sara Sackner.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"Photo<\/a>

Dr. Marvin Sackner<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

It is with profound sorrow that we note the passing of Dr. Marvin Sackner on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at age 88, just a few weeks after the opening of this exhibition. For those of us at Iowa, Dr. Sackner will be forever remembered for selecting the University Libraries as the permanent home of his world-renowned collection of concrete and visual poetry; <\/span>but as his obituary shows<\/a>, his memory will be treasured for his countless contributions in many areas\u2014by his numerous patients, by members of the medical profession, by artists, art historians, and literary scholars around the world, and most of all by his beloved family.<\/span><\/p>\n

This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Ruth and Marvin Sackner.<\/p>\n

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Read the University of Iowa Libraries tribute to Dr. Sackner.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Sackner Archive<\/em> Curator Highlights<\/h3>\n
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A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

Phillips took copies of “A Human Monument,” a second-rate Victorian novel by W. H. Mallock, covering the pages with drawings and collages and leaving portions of the text visible to create an entirely new narrative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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Afrikanische Legenden<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

Ilse Garnier’s “Afrikanische Legenden” (“African Legends”) work incorporates an African symbolic writing system sewn by women into ceremonial carpets and vestments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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Book Walk Series in the Backwoods<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

This unique piece, one of three in the physical exhibit, tells a tale of a community through multiple component parts encased in a pair of leather shoes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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Man Aging Direct Or<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

Artist Richard Tipping explores the authority embodied in signs, subverting it and replacing it with playful anarchy. “Man Aging Direct Or” is a small, unassuming desk nameplate. The work divides \u201cManaging Director,\u201d a title of authority and control, into chunks of text forming new words and meaning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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Matchbooks<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

Seven small matchbooks, a common form for advertising in the past, have Kruger works printed on their covers. Your Manias Become Science (set against an image of an atomic explosion), You Are An Experiment in Terror, Your Silence Is My Comfort and four others enact a double valence of identity and effect through the use of pronouns, a common feature of Kruger\u2019s art. The \u201cYour\u201d and \u201cmy\u201d of \u201cYour comfort is my silence\u201d are both viewer and other, interchangeable, allowing the viewer to apply the text to themselves or somebody else. Small and subtle, the matchbooks are an elegant example of Kruger\u2019s sensibility and artistic agenda.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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Protect Me From What I Want<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

Among the Jenny Holzer artworks in the Sackner Archive is a trucker hat, one of her multiples, bearing the embroidered text, \u201cProtect Me From What I Want.\u201d The message, like others of Holzer\u2019s, speaks of identity, power, and desire. The hat is High and Low culture simultaneously, shifting seamlessly from one to the other, unstable and dangerous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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The art of typewriting<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

Ruth and Marvin\u2019s work The art of typewriting delves into a small but incredibly robust portion of their collection. It is a full-color work featuring some of the many typewriter pieces in their Archive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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The Fall of the Tower of Babel<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

John Furnival’s “The Fall of the Tower of Babel” is one of the early classics of concrete poetry and exists in many versions. It depicts the Biblical story of the splintering of the World\u2019s languages as a vision of nuclear apocalypse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div>

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The Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, 1984 (Catalog)<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t

Not long after Ruth and Marvin Sackner purchased the first items for their Archive, they began creating detailed records of the materials within it. Nothing demonstrates their determination to do so quite like the bulk of this 1984 catalog\u2014roughly 3 inches thick!<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t<\/a>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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Curator Highlight with Timothy Shipe: Merz, Schwitters, Art<\/h4>\n