CHAPEL HILL – “The Art of Reading: Images of Booklovers,” through Aug. 17 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Ackland Art Museum, combines what many consider the best of summertime leisure: reading books and viewing art.

The teaching gallery showcases lithographs, woodcuts, etchings and a photograph, all of which share the common theme of reading. “The Art of Reading” is the culminating project of a yearlong Ackland internship, which engaged recent UNC graduate Miriam Intrator in researching and cataloging for the museum’s collections. Intrator received a master’s degree in library science in May from the School of Information and Library Science; she now is at a second internship in the library at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (temporarily relocated to Queens).
“I’ve always collected images of people reading because it’s the type of image I enjoy looking at,” Intrator said. “I love reading, and I’m obsessed with books.”

From the museum’s permanent collection, Intrator discovered 45 works that include reading as a central theme. From these, she selected 17 pieces and received guidance from museum staff on hanging and identifying the works, as well as developing a contextual explanation for viewers.
For some, reading is a private, solitary act, and they read alone, oblivious to their surroundings. Such is the case with the reader in “The Women’s Page” or the man browsing through books in “An Orgy.” Others read together, as in “Two Girls of the Yoshiwara,” interacting with one another and with the text.

The readers are bookworms, booksellers, scholars and magicians, women and men, young and old. They read for pleasure, to gain understanding, out of habit or to fill a void.
“I am fascinated by these images, because they present the viewer with visual means for considering textual subjects: the written word, the reader and the art of reading,” Intrator said.
Intrator credits Dr. David Carr, associate professor in the School of Information and Library Science, with offering her encouragement to pursue the love of reading as a study area.
“He has made me think deeply about how I read and what reading means in my life.”
And Carr, in turn, praised Intrator for the talents and focus that resulted in such a thought-provoking exhibition.

“Apart from this wonderful exhibition about reading, by a passionate reader, Miriam also completed a master’s paper about the reading experiences of inmates in the concentration camp Theresienstadt. It is perhaps the best of these papers I have ever read – and another case of the right person finding the right topic and giving it her best, most heartfelt energies.”

The thesis is titled “Avenues of Intellectual Resistance in the Ghetto Theresienstadt: Escape through the Ghetto Central Library, Reading, Storytelling and Lecturing.”

The Ackland is on South Columbia Street near Franklin Street. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission is free. For more information, call (919) 966-5736 (museum office) or (919) 962-0837 (TTY), or visit the Web site at www.ackland.org.


Editor's NOTE: A sidebar on summer reading suggestions, compiled by Carr, is available.