In conjunction with Bard Graduate Center’s Focus Projects, New York Crystal Palace 1853 and Design by the Book: Chinese Ritual Objects and the Sanli tu, we have invited Brooklyn-based literary organization Wendy’s Subway to curate a Reading Room in the ground floor of the Gallery. Admission is free, as is the wifi! Wendy’s Subway presents the Reading Room at Bard Graduate Center to promote engagement with artists’ books, periodicals, and other publications selected for their relationship to the spring exhibitions and public programs.

Wendy’s Subway is a non-profit library and writing space located in Brooklyn. Wendy’s Subway hosts a range of public programs, including readings and screenings, interdisciplinary talks and lectures, discussion and reading groups, and writing workshops. The non-circulating library holds a collection of books and documents with a special focus on poetry, art, theory, and philosophy, as well as the Laurin Raiken Archive, an extensive resource for the study of art history and criticism. Wendy’s Subway is operated by its membership of poets, curators, novelists, artists, and critics with an interest in hybrid forms and cross-disciplinary discourse.

Originally designed by Tyler Polich and Hannah Wilentz, Reading Rooms have previously been installed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York); White Columns (New York); NADA New York (with Aeromoto, Mexico City); Brown University, (Providence, RI); and the Carnegie Mellon University School of the Arts (Pittsburgh, PA).