This collection is located onsite.
This collection has no restrictions.
Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here is an arts initiative and an archival collection conceived as a response to violence and directed at creating shared cultural spaces. The project and the collection were initiated by Beau Beausoleil in 2007 following the March 5 car bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street (the street of the booksellers) in Baghdad, Iraq. Beausoleil writes, "We are not a project of pity or healing; we are a project of Witness, Memory, and Solidarity," and "Free speech and the free exchange of ideas are at the core of what al-Mutanabbi Street represents to us. We do not attempt to speak for the Iraqi people, they have their own voice. Rather, we want them to know that we see them and hear them in their own struggle for a more just society, and that we will not let anyone in the West forget them." As of 2023, the archive holds approximately 260 artists' books, 200 prints, 100 letterpress broadsides, 57 photographs, and a collection of bookmarks, made by over 600 poets, writers, and artists from twenty countries. The artists' books are cataloged individually in CLIO, and are described as a group in the record https://clio.columbia.edu/archives/15498023. The project also produced an anthology, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5th, 2007, Bombing of Baghdad's "Street of the Booksellers," published by PM Press in 2012. Edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema K. Shehabi, the anthology includes writing by Iraqis and an international group of poets and writers. Copies are cataloged in CLIO.
For the printmaking part of this project, Absence and Presence, Beau Beausoleil worked with coordinators from across the US, the UK and Australia. A widely diverse group of printmakers was been assembled from Europe and the US, with additional artists from the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Each print is on a sheet size of 11 x 15 inches. Series consists of 193 numbered prints. Print No. 145 is listed and shelved with broadsides. Prints 69, 128, 142 and 161 are oversize and shelved in a flat box. Artists' statements for these prints are available.
Series II: Numbered Broadsides
Broadsides were the first focus of the Coalition, which started in March 2007, when Beau Beausoleil put together a memorial reading, and also called for letterpress printers to create a personal response to the bombing. Kathy Walkup at Mills College in California and later Sarah Bodman at the University of the West of England helped spread the word among printers. The broadsides project has been touring internationally since 2008, with associated readings and panel discussions. A complete set of the broadsides has been donated to the Iraq National Library in Baghdad. Florida Atlantic University's digital collection of the "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here" Broadsides is a convenient way to see 133 printed broadsides (the collection presented to Columbia has 141 broadsides). library.fau.edu/depts/spc/jaffecenter/collection/almutanabbi/ index.php Series consists of 98 numbered broadsides. Broadsides No. 43 and 65 are kept in a larger flat box together with Series III materials. No. 37 is missing.
Series III: Unnumbered Broadsides, 2021
An additional group of broadsides in response to the project. Series consists of 44 unnumbered broadsides
The bookmark project started in 2014, with a call to artists to create bookmarks, started by Beau and by UK-based poet/book artist/activist Ama Bolton. This part of the project is a "quiet, bookish" street action, in which each participant was asked to create at least 50 bookmarks incorporating the text "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here," with no names or web pages included, and then to distribute the bookmarks in "some imaginative place" or by handing them out. Five copies were to be sent in for the archive. The blog https://markerofwitness.wordpress.com/ by poet Ama Bolton details the bookmark project.
The photography project, Shadow and Light, was begun in late 2018 as a response to the assassination of over 300 Iraqi academics between the years 2003-2013, a timeframe which roughly parallels the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Participants photographers, academics, translators, artists, etc.) from all over the world each selected the name of an assassinated Iraqi academic to memorialize with a photograph, accompanied by a statement, to make visible these individuals. In May of 2023, there are 57 photographs in the project archive.
The list of academics used was found on the website www.iraqsolidaridad.org, which as of 2023 is not live.
Series VI: Printed materials and ephemera
Series consists of articles, exhibition catalogs and other descriptive materials relating to the project.
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.
This collection is located onsite.
This collection has no restrictions.
Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection: Companion collection of individually cataloged books. The books from this collection need to be requested individually.
Virtual exhibit (in English and Arabic) of the work from Shadow and Light that was exhibited at The University of Iowa Pentacrest Museums: https://pentacrestmuseums.uiowa.edu/shadow-light
Gift of Beau Beausoleil, 2019.
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
In 2007, Beau Beausoleil (1941-), poet and bookseller, founded the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition as a response to the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street, the center of bookselling in Baghdad, Iraq. Each participating book artist was asked to complete three books over the course of a year that reflected both the strength and fragility of books, but also showed the endurance of the ideas within them. Coalition members include poets, writers, and artists from many countries, and projects have included broadsides, artists' books, prints, bookmarks, music, photography, and more. The mission of the coalition focuses on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas and the preservation of shared cultural spaces.
Al Mutannabbi Street Starts Here was exhibited extensively in the U.S. and the U.K. as well as in Baghdad, the American University in Cairo, in Venice, Italy, The Netherlands, and most recently in Sweden. An accompanying anthology of poetry and prose, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, was published by PM Press. An exhibit of work from the related project Shadow and Light was exhibited at the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (2019).
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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