Introduction

Colin B. Bailey, Director, The Morgan Library and Museum: Hello, I’m Colin B. Bailey, Director of the Morgan Library and Museum, and I am delighted to welcome you to Uncommon Denominator: Nina Katchadourian at the Morgan.

Nina Katchadourian is an artist who works in many media and idioms, often with the aim of achieving what she calls a “useful and revealing disorientation.” Circling the perimeter of the gallery is a sequence of eighty-nine objects Katchadourian created, drawing from two sources. One source is the Morgan itself, where she was attracted not only to books, manuscripts, and artworks but tools and other elements of the institution’s working life. The artist was similarly expansive in representing her side of the dialogue, which is populated by her art of the past three decades as well as objects created during her childhood and by members of her family over the past century.

At the center of the gallery you’ll find the twenty-four photographs of a commission that Katchadourian executed for the Morgan while organizing the exhibition. Titled “Look Who’s Talking,” the series is part of the artist’s ongoing project Sorted Books, in which she composes aphorisms and narratives out of titles on the spines in a collection of books. Her subject, in this instance, is the Morgan’s Carter Burden Collection of American Literature.

As you move through the gallery, look for the audio symbols to discover commentary by Nina Katchadourian, complementing her remarks posted among the works on view. Thank you for joining us at the Morgan. We hope you enjoy your visit.