As the institution's Director of Library and Research Center starting in 1982 (since 2002 she has been its Curator of Book Arts), Wasserman saw an opportunity to build a collection focused more broadly than just books about art made by women. Through acquisitions and exhibitions, Wasserman and the museum encouraged the exposure and production of artist books. The museum's Library Fellows started an annual competition in 1989, awarding a grant to the artist with the best proposal for the production of new work. Contributions from the Fellows and sales of the funded book help to support regular exhibitions of artist books in the Museum's library and the acquisition of new books made by women. In October 2006, the Museum opened an exhibit documenting its twenty years of book arts collecting and exhibitions. Including more than one hundred works and filling an entire floor of the museum, this extensive showing was perhaps the largest exhibition of contemporary artist books in recent years. Shortly thereafter, the Museum published a large and beautifully produced volume documenting selections from the collection's more than eight hundred works. The Book as Art: Artists' Books from the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007) focuses rightly on the works themselves, with either a one- or two-page spread generously devoted to each, beautifully photographed and printed. In addition to images of the work, each entry includes a statement by the artist about her book and various documentary information: title and year; artist name, nationality, and year of birth; materials and method of manufacture; dimensions; size of edition; and how it came to be in the Museum's collection. The statements are frequently illuminating in ON the National Museumrevealing the import and meaning of the work. The Book as Art also includes short essays by Wasserman, Johanna Drucker, and Audrey Niffenegger. These texts help give context to the works included, whether as part of an institutional collection (Wasserman), as contemporary book arts drawn from feminism (Drucker), or via one artist's personal history with books (Niffenegger). A particular focus on handmade paper has not been Wasserman's intent in building this collection. Only a small minority of works in the exhibit and collection are made of artist-made paper or incorporate handmade paper. Nonetheless, these works exhibit strength and purpose. Among them, The Dream of the Dirty Woman (1980), by Claire Van Vliet, an early pioneer of the use of handmade paper as an art form, features the artist's pulppainted washes as backdrops for collagraphs interspersed with letterpress-printed text. This approach to materials—incorporating handmade paper into the printing and printmaking of the books—is one that Van Vliet has used repeatedly in her works. Ann M. Kresge, in Shadow Play (1998), has designed a book that can be manipulated and rearranged by the reader. She created complex printed paper-and-stick figures to which she ascribes certain traits and characteristics. She invites viewers to stage their own small dramas with these puppet characters on a foldout stage created when the book (hinged right and left) is opened. Béatrice Coron's La ballade des pendus \[Ballad of the hanged\] (1998) incorporates a poem by François Villon, as translated by Mick Stern. Coron uses a buff paper within a shadow box as the backdrop for her grim, backlit paper cut-out, depicting crows surrounding three hanged figures. She wrote out the poem by hand using an old pen nib on rough handmade paper with flecks that suggest the material in ropes used for hanging. Another sobering work, Tatana Kellner's B-11226: Fifty Years of Silence (1992) incorporates a cast handmade paper upper arm Béatrice Coron, La ballade des pendus \[Ballad of the hanged\], 1998, 15 x 9 ¾ inches, poem by François Villon, papercuts, shadow box, glass, electric bulb, wire, velvet paper, Indian handmade paper, ink, rust, book cloth, sand, published by the artist in an edition of 5. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Gift of Lorraine Grace. Tatana Kellner, B-11226: Fifty Years of Silence, 1992, 12 x 20 x 3 inches, silkscreen, cast handmade paper, published by Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale, New York, in an edition of 50. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Gift of Lynn M. Johnston. 24 - hand papermaking clockwise from top left Carol Barton, Five Luminous Towers: A Book to be Read in the Dark, 2001, 11 ½ x 7 ½ inches, offset print, bulb, wire, board, Japanese book cloth, published by Popular Kinetics Press, Glen Echo, Maryland, in an edition of 50. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Gift of the United States Department of Education; M. L. Van Nice, Dinner with Mr. Dewey, 2001–02, 32 x 42 x 20 inches, unique book installation: wood, papier-mâché, leather, paper, glass, drawing, linen, acrylic paint, graphite, ink, fish spine, wine bottle, five altered books. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. NMWA Members' Art Acquisition Fund; Karen Kunc, Offering Time, 2001, 8 x 6 ¾ inches, songs by Rabindranath Tagore, book: color woodcuts on Japanese Nishinouchi paper, letterpress, intaglio-printed dots, watercolor washes, box: sharkskin-paper-covered folio box, published by Blue Heron Press, Avoca, Nebraska, in an edition of 50. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Gift of Lynn M. Johnston; Sandra Jackman, On a Darkling Plain, 2000, 16 x 17 x 16 inches, poem by Matthew Arnold, altered book, painted and collaged paper, radio, altered toy helicopter, photographs, bottle, iron stand. Unique artist book. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Gift of H. G. Spencer in honor of Lorraine Grace. and hand, representing the artist's father's. Embedded in the book such that the cut-out pages surrounding it always show the arm at their center, it is tattooed with the identification code given him by the Nazis at Auschwitz during World War II. Both of Kellner's parents survived the Holocaust, but many members of their families did not. Kellner's use of old family photographs and images of her parents' native Czechoslovakia, along with text, create a bold contrast with the stark and haunting forelimb. Of those works that do not use handmade paper, many often treat paper in a way that acknowledges it as a substance integral to the work rather than merely a bland, limp surface for text or image. Whether torn, rolled, collaged, or deeply imprinted, in these works the paper speaks forcefully. Carol Barton has long been known for her mastery of tunnel books. In Five Luminous Towers: A Book to be Read in the Dark (2001), Barton explores another facet of sculptural books, producing wonderfully tall architectural pop-ups. A medieval Italian tower is positioned on an ancient city map; a sacred structure springs from a score of early Christian music. Each pop-up is lit from the inside, a neat trick of electrical know-how built into the binding of the book. In this work, white paper is carefully cut and engineered to create an intriguing environment. One of the most inventive works in the collection is M. L. Van Nice's Dinner with Mr. Dewey (2001–02). Van Nice has transformed books and paper into a full meal, half-eaten and arranged like a classic still life. She uses her materials to recreate hors d'oeuvres, corn on the cob, a roast or meatloaf, a fish, pie, and even oatmeal in its own book-bowl. All of the items, silverware included, are marked with their proper Dewey decimal library cataloguing number. A wine bottle has the labeled inscription "IN 641.872 VERITAS." (The Dewey decimal number 641.872 designates the subject of wine, vino.) Such an inventive use of manipulated book structure and paper is typical of Van Julie Chen, Octopus, 1992, 10 ¾ x 13 ½ inches, poem by Elizabeth McDevitt, letterpress on paper, published by Flying Fish Press, Berkeley, California, in an edition of 100. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Gift of United States Department of Education. Carol Barton, Tunnel Map, 1988, 7 ½ inches diameter, watercolor, gouache, color pencil on paper, created in an edition of 150 at the Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale, New York. Collection National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Gift of the artist. Nice's playful but carefully constructed assemblages. In them, she comments on the history of books, how they are categorized, and perhaps even how we consume them. For those in Washington or able to visit, an appointment to view artist books in the library at the National Museum of Women in the Arts is highly recommended. For all, the 2007 publication on the collection should be appreciated as a rich and valuable source of both information and inspiration. the book as art: artists' books from the national museum of women in the arts Krystyna Wasserman, with additional essays by Johanna Drucker and Audrey Ni=enegger. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. 192 pages, 11 ¼ x 8 ¾ x 1 inches (hardcover), color plates throughout. Includes statements by the artists and index.