Reading Room

Reading Room, by Elizabeth Felicella, is in installation in Art in General’s Project Space excerpted from the artist’s ongoing photographic catalog of New York City’s branch libraries. Working with a large format camera, Felicella will document the interior and exterior of each of the city’s 189 neighborhood libraries over the next year. This is the first exhibit of the catalog and includes branches one through twenty-five, her work to date.

The black and white photographs, printed as cards, are cross-referenced in a series of cases and presented with replicas of standard-issue library furniture, bringing to mind Melvil Dewey’s systems of organization. Reading Room functions as a survey of public architecture and design as it relates to reading technology and innovations--but it is also a record of the photographer’s own process of browsing.

Visitors are encouraged to use the Reading Room in the Project Space and browse the catalog at will.

Reading Room is made possible by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and with administrative support from the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP).