Now Open in Our Second Floor Gallery: Language, Decipherment, Translation – from Then to Now

From the Collection of Deirdre E. Lawrence

February 29 – May 11

A new exhibition of contemporary art books at the Grolier Club celebrates thousands of years of communication through real and imagined languages. On view from February 29 through May 11, 2024 in the Club’s second floor gallery, Language, Decipherment, and Translation – from Then to Now presents more than 40 books, collages, prints, scrolls, and sculpted books that feature hieroglyphics, translations of classic folktales, and other forms of storytelling.

Curated by Grolier Club member Deirdre Lawrence—who was inspired in part by the recent 200th anniversary of the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone (1822)—the exhibition features many intricately detailed art books by visionary contemporary artists. “Drawn primarily from my personal collection of approximately 2,000 books and prints, and growing, this exhibition reflects my collecting interests spanning the ancient world, especially Egypt; the work of Walt Whitman, who was himself enthralled by Ancient Egypt; the history of art, especially photography; and books made by contemporary artists,” said Lawrence.

Exhibition Highlights

The exhibition begins with a prelude of historical materials related to the Rosetta Stone and other early attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. Among the works on view are an 1842 study by French linguist Jean-François Champollion, who in 1822 deciphered the Stone’s Egyptian and Greek texts to unlock modern understanding of hieroglyphics, and an 1858 copy of a drawing of the Stone in the British Museum by Charles Reuben Hale, one of the authors of the first published English translation of the Rosetta Stone.

The exhibition then makes a seismic leap to the current moment, showcasing more than 40 contemporary art books from 1984-2023 that explore themes of erasure, signs and symbols, and other forms of communication. Works on view feature inventive imagery, typography, design, printing, and bindings, such as the laser cut Arabic calligraphy in Islam Mahmoud Mohamed Aly’s Marginalia 1 (2013) that appears burned into the pages. In The Flight into Egypt: The Third Magnitude (2009-2010), artist Timothy C. Ely depicts a fantastical world of floating pyramids, topographic maps, and scrolls with his own personal writing system called “Cribriform.” Laura Davidson’s book Useful Knowledge (1998) has hand-colored Linoleum prints inspired by an Italian book she found with patterns, letter forms, and text blocks that have deeply influenced her art-making for decades.

Visit the exhibition online, or view case images via Flickr.