Five Colleges, Incorporated: BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book

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Museums10 to Launch BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book

Over Fifty Exhibitions, Events During Four-Month Festival of Literary Arts [click here for schedule]

Museums10 is proud to announce the start of BookMarks: A Celebration of the Art of the Book. The Pioneer Valley-wide cross-promotional cultural tourism initiative kicks off in September and runs through January 2008. It is sponsored by the three-year-old partnership of museums, seven of which are affiliated with the five colleges of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke College, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, along with three independent museums, and facilitated by Five Colleges, Incorporated.

The four-month festival is packed with fourteen exhibitions with book related themes at Museums10 partner sites, with two each at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Hampshire College Art Gallery, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, and the National Yiddish Book Center. In addition to the exhibition calendar, BookMarks also includes:

Participation by more than thirty businesses and cultural organizations, from A (Amherst Cinema Arts Center) to Z (Zea Mays Printmaking);

Three Big Themed Weekends -- Art of the Book (September 20-23), Books Out Loud (October 11-14), and Books to Blogs and Back (November 15-18);
Participation and programming by a new partnership of local independent bookstores (Bookstores10); and
More than 50 programs (and still growing!)

“Museums10 is proud to sponsor such an ambitious series of programming and is pleased that our sister organizations and friends in the business community have joined with us to create an exciting array of exhibitions, readings, and events,” says Marianne Doezema, director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. “Museums10 and BookMarks is leading they way in fostering cooperation in the promotion of the Pioneer Valley as a premier destination for cultural tourism.”

All of the activity underscores the unique mandate of the Museums10 partnership. Funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s John and Abigail Adams Arts Program, the mission of Museums10 is to boost museum attendance through its collective marketing and branding efforts, but also to increase cultural tourism in the region and positively influence the local economy.

Says Marianne Doezema, “the arts are good business. Cultural tourists have a very positive impact on the local community; they attend museums, and shop in our local bookstores, eat in the restaurants in our towns. Most important, those coming from outside the area tend to stay awhile.”

The first chapter of BookMarks is an exciting one, with the opening of eleven exhibitions between August 25 and September 7. They are:

The Write Stuff: The Material Culture of Literacy at Historic Deerfield, August 25 -- February 10
The Face of Poetry at the Smith College Library, August 31- December 20
Alpha Botanica and The People’s Book: The Five Books of Moses in the Yiddish Imagination at National Yiddish Book Center, September 1 -- January 31
Cover Story: Art and Novels of Mary P. Wells Smith at Memorial Hall Museum, Deerfield, September 1 -- November 4
The Seahorse and The Elephant: Amherst and Fine Printing at Amherst College Library Archives and Special Collections, September 1 -- December 1
Bookworm: Photographs by Rosamond Purcell and Two by Two: Lines, Rhymes, and Riddles at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, September 4 -- December 16
Off the Shelf: Artists’ Books from the Amherst Library Collection at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, September 4 -- November 18
Fiber+Book: an Exhibition of Unique Artist Books at Fiber Art Center, Amherst, September 6 -- October 20
Geometria: Printed & Painted Papers by Art Larson at Blue Guitar Gallery, Easthampton, September 7 -- October 31.

A full schedule of events is attached and available at www.museums10.org. Exhibitions and programming are subject to change.

Museums10 is a partnership of ten museums -- Amherst College Museum of Natural History, Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead & The Evergreens, Hampshire College Art Gallery, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, National Yiddish Book Center, and Historic Deerfield -- in the Upper Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, facilitated by Five Colleges, Incorporated dedicated to promoting the cultural riches of the region.

Museums10 and BookMarks: a Celebration of the Art of the Book is sponsored by the generous support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s John and Abigail Adams Arts Program, The Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, Veridian Village at Hampshire College, 88.5 FM -- WFCR NPR News and Music for Western New England, WGBY, Preview Magazine, Cross-Culture Journeys, Coastal Outdoor Advertising, Marcus Printing, and Spencer Timm. For more information about Museums10 and BookMarks, go to www.museums10.org.

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