Arion Press is proud to announce SFMOMA's Director of Library David Senior as the third speaker in the Arion Press Craft Talk series, in which we draw from our creative community to highlight the joy and industry of various crafts. David will be presenting a talk called “How to Make a Contemporary Art Library” sharing the craft of building collections and the continuum of artist books.

For the last 20 years, David Senior has worked in the libraries of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and MoMA in New York. In that time, he helped build these special collections of modern and contemporary art books and ephemera and has specifically focused on documenting the different ways that artists and designers have used publishing as part of their practices. Using examples from these collections, Senior will discuss examples of artists’ publications that shaped his understanding of the genre and how collections can grow and expand into new areas. He also discusses the opportunities for creative engagement with these collections through educational outreach, programs and exhibitions as well as cultivating relationships with artists and publishers to directly support their work. Senior will specifically highlight recent work at SFMOMA Library that focuses on the local history of artists’ publications and ephemera from Northern California.

The talk will be 1 hour with a 15 minute Q&A, and a reception to follow in the Arion Press Gallery.

David Senior is the Director of Library at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Senior has lectured widely on the history of artists' publishing and has edited books and contributed many essays and interviews about artists' publications, art librarianship and modern and contemporary art history. He recently co-curated People Make This Place: SFAI Stories, an exhibition produced in collaboration with the SFAI Legacy Foundation and Archive, that is on view at SFMOMA for the next year. Formerly he was Senior Bibliographer at MoMA Library in New York City. At MoMA, Senior curated many exhibitions of artists’ books, magazines, and ephemera from MoMA Library’s collection, including: THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY (2016); Ray Johnson Designs (2014); Please Come to the Show (2013); Millennium Magazines (2012); and Access to Tools: Publications from the Whole Earth Catalog, 1968–74 (2011) and Back in Time with Time-Based Works: Artists' Books at Franklin Furnace, 1976–1980 (2017). For the last sixteen years, he organized a program of events, the Classroom, for Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair and more recently, at the Los Angeles Art Book Fair. Over this period, the Classroom hosted over four hundred talks, performances, and workshops by contemporary artists, designers, writers, and publishers. He has also curated the program of talks and events at the San Francisco Art Book Fair since 2018. Senior is currently working on an upcoming book about a history of Bay Area exhibition ephemera with RITE Editions in conjunction with the forthcoming Further Triennial.