Artistry of Bookmaking Highlighted in New Bedford Exhibition

Boundless: The Book as Art opens tomorrow at The New Bedford Whaling Museum celebrating creativity in traditional book arts, including printing, typography, illustration, bookbinding, papermaking, and graphic design. 

On view through February 15, 2027, the exhibition includes more than 200 rare books showcasing the evolving methods and concepts of bookmaking. 

Highlights include a guidebook to the St. Lawrence river with an 11-foot-long pull out map, textile sample books showcasing materials manufactured in New Bedford factories, and hair albums, herbaria, and seaweed albums made by regional women

The display also features a selection of illustrated natural history volumes including:

• the museum’s earliest printed book, Theobaldus’s Phisiologus Theobaldi Episcopi de naturis duodecim animalium, printed in Cologne in 1494
• a volume by Louis Renard showing vividly colored fish and other aquatic lifeforms printed in Paris in 1754
• early catalogs for cabinets of curiosities including the Museo Cospiano (Bologna, 1677) and Museum Wormianum (Amsterdam, 1655)
• the 1930 double volume Lakeside Press printing of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick illustrated by Rockwell Kent

Works by contemporary book artists Andrea Dezsö, Melanie Mowinski, Anneli Skaar, and Tracey Cockrell will also be on show. 


“In a time when screens dominate so much of our daily lives, Boundless celebrates the intimacy of reading from the physical page and the allure of a new book, the distinctive smell of fresh ink and texture of new paper," said said Naomi Slipp, the Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Chair for Chief Curator and Director of Museum Learning. "It considers the creative processes and craftsmanship of bookmaking, featuring three-dimensional works employing a range of media and techniques,”