February 2012 Dinner Meeting

Speaker:  Suzanne Karr Schmidt

Historians of the book have long known the importance of signs of use and readership; what happens when art historians 'discover' this approach? From the sublime to the ridiculous, this talk will give a glimpse into the new research possibilities inherent in interactive printed matter, books and beyond.

Suzanne Karr Schmidt is the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. She recently curated an exhibition there on the many uses of early print and printed images, "Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life," and worked extensively on the upcoming Harvard and Block Museum of Art exhibition, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Both shows include a record number of books and boast stunning and scholarly exhibition catalogues. She received her doctorate from Yale University in 2006 for a dissertation on early modern paper engineering, collects early ephemera, and has spent as much time as possible at Rare Book School.