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Sunday, August 6, 2017

"The Parthenon of Books"

Yesterday, I blogged about an exhibition of art inspired by Shakespeare’s plays.  There is another exhibition that readers might like to see in Kassel, Germany.


South American conceptual artist, Marta Minujín, designed an installation called ‘The Parthenon of Books.’  Minujin compiled a list of 170 books banned in various parts of the world, and she asked the public for help in gathering 100,000 copies of them.

The installation has been constructed, with the same dimensions of the real-life Parthenon in Athens, at Friedrichsplatz Park where, on May 19, 1933, Nazi sympathisers burned an estimated 2,000 prohibited books by Jewish or Marxist writers. 

The exhibition ends on September 17, at the end of which the books will be re-circulated to the public.

The artist also constructed a replica in Buenos Aires in 1983, choosing books banned during the Argentinian military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.  The Tate Gallery in London has a documentary record of this project:  http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/minujin-the-parthenon-of-books-t14343.

For more photos and information about the current exhibition, go to http://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/07/05/parthenon-of-books-germany/?lpaffil=lp-affiliates.   And for a video, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGQ5J-_9r6c.

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