The Little Magazine

Curated by Sophie Seita

On view May 15, 2018 through November 28, 2018

The “little magazine” is usually understood to be a publication with a small budget, small print run, a short life-span, and thus a relatively small audience. This exhibition celebrates the eclectic, diverse, and community-oriented materials of the Poets House collection and the multifarious contributions small magazines have made not only to the development of poets and artists, but also to national and  international  literary, cultural, and  political movements. Emphasizing the material richness and collaborative spirit of experimental publications and publishing communities, the  exhibition includes magazines associated with Modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, the Mimeograph Revolution, Conceptual Art, Language Writing, and New Narrative, as well as feminist, queer, and other contemporary communities. The exhibition draws attention to the heterogeneity of materials that magazines published; their innovations in design, typography, and aesthetic form; their often outspoken political impetus; their implicit or explicit inclusivity or exclusivity; and the collective work of editors, practitioners, readers, and other, often invisible, participants.

—Sophie Seita

Sophie Seita is an artist working with text, performance, translation, collaboration, and through research, and a Junior Research Fellow at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge. Her first scholarly monograph, Provisional Avant-Gardes: Little Magazine Communities from Dada to Digital, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press. She’s also the editor of a centenary facsimile reprint of the proto-Dada magazine The Blind Man (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017), named one of the New York Times Best Art Books of 2017.

Download the Exhibition List

Download the Digital Display Exhibition List

Read Sophie Seita’s interview with little-magazine editor and writer Kevin Killian