NINE INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS REINVENT THE BOOK ON A LARGE SCALE: “CONTEMPORARY VOLUMES” AT THE MORRIS MUSEUM
At the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, the book transforms from a container of words into a plastic material, a living surface, an architecture of thought. Contemporary Volumes — on view through March 2026 — explores the formal and conceptual power of the book as an object through the vision of nine international artists who expand its physical and symbolic boundaries.
Conceived as a reflection on design and on the ways in which the book continues to inspire contemporary artistic practice, the exhibition brings together heterogeneous languages and divergent sensibilities — political, aesthetic, poetic, and at times fantastical — in a dialogue that intertwines matter and memory, archiving and erasure, construction and the dissolution of knowledge.
The works, made with materials ranging from wood to metal, from acrylic paint to organic and recycled elements such as coffee grounds and deconstructed books, address urgent issues such as censorship and historical oblivion, while questioning the very nature of the book as an object. As Thomas J. Loughman, President and CEO of the museum, notes: “Visual artists have always been inspired by the ideas preserved and archived in books. This exhibition examines how their physical form shapes creation and thought in today’s artistic practice.”
Among the featured artists, Colette Fu presents Noodle Mountain and other works that expand the limits of paper engineering into complex, kinetic sculptures — true devices of three-dimensional storytelling. Brian Dettmer, a master of the metamorphosis of the book, carves and transforms preexisting texts into intricate sculptural organisms.
Dominating the museum space is the monumental work of Samuelle Green, which transcends the boundaries of installation to become an all-encompassing environment. Her creation envelops the viewer in a structure suspended between architecture and dream, where the book loses its original scale to become landscape, cavern, and paper cosmos. It is a work that must be physically experienced — not merely observed, but entered and inhabited — becoming a perceptual extension of both body and mind.
Amanda Love, in turn, addresses the theme of literary censorship through a practice that dissects and reassembles books, creating structures that evoke emotional and geographical landscapes — as in her installation inspired by the sinuous course of the Tigris River.
Their works enter into dialogue with those of Cheryl Gross, Sarah Faith Matthews, Cheryl R. Riley, Susan Rostow, and Diana Schmertz, offering a broad panorama of current experimentation with the book as a sculptural and symbolic medium.
The nine artists featured in Contemporary Volumes come from various regions of the United States and boast international exhibition histories, including solo shows at institutions such as the Riverside Museum of Art in Beijing, Arte Laguna in Venice, the University of Maine Museum of Art, the Everhart Museum, and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton.
Colette Fu will also be featured in the 2026 season of PBS’s Craft in America. On the occasion of the exhibition, the artist will give a public lecture and demonstration on December 13, followed by an advance screening of the episode dedicated to her at the museum’s Bickford Theatre.
Supported by theM&T Bank Charitable Foundation, Contemporary Volumes aligns with the broader mission of the Morris Museum, one of New Jersey’s most dynamic cultural institutions. Founded in 1913 and located on an 8.5-acre site in Morris Township, the museum houses more than 45,000 works and objects of art and material culture from around the world, distributed between its contemporary galleries and the historic Twin Oaks mansion, designed by McKim, Mead & White.
With this exhibition, the Morris Museum reaffirms its role as a laboratory of curiosity and wonder, inviting the public to rediscover the book as a form of art, a shared memory, and a terrain of continuous reinvention.
