Devynn Alston, Contributing Writer
The Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU is hosting a reception to celebrate the release of two books from their publishing house on Feb. 20 — bringing art off walls and onto book pages.
The two books featured are “Living to Learn: Art and Education for the Common Good,” by Noah Simblist, an associate professor at VCUarts and “Dear Mazie: Sanctuary, Speculation, and Sky,” by Amber Esseiva, a senior curator at the ICA.
Both Simblist and Essevia chose the ICA as their publishing house because of the connections they have to the institute.
The ICA is considered an academic museum that looks to combine art and education, according to Simblist.
“It’s a kind of project that makes sense to them [the ICA] because some museums put on shows for a general public. But, there’s an opportunity for a museum that’s inside of a university tied to scholarship and research that other public space might not be as invested in,” Simblist said.
The institution is not a large publishing house — both authors were editors of the books and outsourced the rest of their publishing processes.
The two books are meant to be seen as extensions of the exhibitions they highlight. Living to Learn, highlights how artists over the last 25 years turn their exhibitions into schools.
“Dear Mazie is a book that followed a multi-site exhibition, also titled Dear Mazie, where a group of artists, architects and designers were responding to a legacy of a mausoleum narrative, which was the late Black, queer architects from Virginia at Virginia State University,” Esseiva said.
Creating books from exhibitions gives them longevity, as after an exhibition is completed, all the records of the work in it are gone, other than viewers’ memories and photos. That is why it was important to immortalize “Dear Mazie,” Esseiva said.
The idea for the book “Living to Learn” came from the desire to have an expansive project — called a triennial — that includes an exhibition, a conference and a publication with projects throughout the whole city with a primary theme of education, Simblist said.
Both books look to give the exhibition views an expanded view of the works they saw, as well as providing deeper understanding of the work.
ICA publication celebration will be Feb. 20 at the ICA from 6-7 p.m.