Fifty years is a long time for any cultural institution to survive, let alone one built around the proposition that artists’ books deserve to be treated as serious works of art rather than catalogues or afterthoughts. Printed Matter, founded in Tribeca in the winter of 1975–76, reaches that landmark this year, and the anniversary programme it has assembled is substantial enough to suggest the organisation has no intention of celebrating quietly.
In December 1975, a group of artists and art workers, among them Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Pat Steir, Edit deAk, Walter Robinson, and several others, circulated a letter calling for a new publishing and distribution system for artists’ books. The gap in the market for such publications was seen as radical in equal measure: books could carry art directly into people’s hands, bypassing the gallery system entirely, at a price point that made access genuinely possible rather than notional. Early meetings were held at Franklin Furnace. By 1976, a ground-level bookstore had opened on Lispenard Street in Tribeca, and an institution had begun.
Lippard and inaugural director Ingrid Sischy secured nonprofit status in 1979, defining the organisation as “a service, an educational vehicle, an artistic practice.” That framing still holds. Printed Matter now occupies its fifth and largest location, a two-level bookstore and office on 11th Avenue and 26th Street in Manhattan, housing over 15,000 artists’ books, zines and periodicals alongside rare and out-of-print materials. Its publishing programme runs to nearly fifty titles. Its Art Book Fairs in New York and Los Angeles have become international models for what a book fair can be when it treats publishing as a cultural form rather than a commercial one.
The 50th anniversary programme kicks off with a Benefit Dinner on 21 April, honouring Ed Ruscha, one of the figures most closely associated with the artist’s book as a serious medium, with an introduction by Christophe Cherix. The evening will also include a founder spotlight on Pat Steir, who died earlier this year, making the tribute particularly resonant. BlackMass Publishing receives an artist spotlight. Space is limited.
The LA Art Book Fair returns for its second year at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena from 7 to 10 May. The NY Art Book Fair, marking its own 20th anniversary, returns to MoMA PS1 from 24 to 27 September. Both fairs have developed into something considerably larger than their origins suggested, genuine cultural gatherings that draw publishers, artists and readers from across the world and have demonstrably expanded the audience for artists’ books in ways the founding group probably couldn’t have anticipated.
The exhibition programme for the anniversary year is anchored by a special archival show exploring Gordon Matta-Clark’s Walls Paper, his iconic artist’s book — opening 9 September, placed in dialogue with a newly commissioned work by Laura Owens. Earlier in the summer, a solo exhibition with artist and publisher Chang Yuchen launches the season. An online initiative called “50 Objects, 50 Years” will invite contributors to reflect on significant items from the organisation’s history, a collective memory project that will produce its own kind of archive. The third cycle of the Printed Matter Publisher Work Grant, an unrestricted award supporting independent artists’ book publishers, continues. A facsimile edition of GAAG: The Guerrilla Art Action Group, originally published in 1978, is due in autumn 2026, co-published with Primary Information.
Lesley A. Martin, Executive Director, has been clear about what she sees at stake. “Fifty years ago, Printed Matter emerged from a moment of radical rethinking about what art can be, and how we experience it,” she said. “With artists’ voices and the organisations that support them increasingly under threat, we need Printed Matter now more than ever.” That last sentence carries a particular weight in the current environment, where independent publishing and experimental art practice are both under sustained pressure from economic and algorithmic forces that reward reach over depth.
The founding vision that printed Matter can carry the political, cultural and artistic potential of art directly into people’s hands sounds as urgent in 2026 as it did in 1975. Possibly more so.
Top Photo: Printed Matter storefront on Lispenard Street, circa 1970. Photo Peter Downsbrough