Maureen Piggins

A Book About Death and MOMA, New York

New York artist and writer, Matthew Rose, asked artists to each contribute 500 postcards to create an unbound book about death, in homage to Ray Johnson, Emily Harvey, and as a global exploration of death. 486 artists responded to the call and A Book About Death was shown at The Emily Harvey Gallery in New York city on September 10, 2009. The works were installed on the wall while the remaining copies sat in rows of boxes on the gallery floor for visitors to take and create their own book about death. All of the postcards were free.

The show has since been recreated by different participating artists who collected entire sets of the original exhibition. These have been exhibited at The Queen’s Museum of Art, Queens, NY, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles; River Mill Art Gallery, Westfield, NJ, USA; South End Open Studios, Boston; The Sexta Literary Arts Festival, Tijuana, Mexico; and Ripe Art Gallery, Greenlawn, NY, among other places.

A Book About Death has also been acquired for the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as for collections in the MUBE (Museu Brasileiro da Escultura), São Paulo, Brazil, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Balch Research Library, Los Angeles.

The ABAD website and archive contains much more about the contributing artists and future happenings.

My postcard, below, contained excerpts from my artist book “Echo”.