In celebration of this year’s monumental Inauguration Day on January 20, the Walt Whitman Initiative presents its inaugural Robust American Love discussion: an examination of Whitman’s self-professed status as the “Bard of Democracy.”  Please join curators Deirdre Lawrence (“Walt Whitman’s Words: Inspiring Artists Today”; Center for Book Arts, 2019), Ted Widmer (“Walt Whitman: Bard of Democracy”; Morgan Library, 2019), and Karen Karbiener (“Poet of the Body: New York’s Walt Whitman”, Grolier Club, 2019) for an ‘exhibition’ of their favorite objects representing Whitman’s democratic ideals.

Resources for Event:

• https://clarissasligh.com/
• https://wsworkshop.org/2019/06/clarissa-sligh-living-a-life-the-personal-and-the-political/
• https://sheville.org/featured-book-transforming-hate-an-artist-s-book-2016-by-clarissa-t-sligh/
• http://centerforbookarts.dreamhosters.com/index.php/Browse/modifyCriteria/facet/individual_facet/id/2937/mod_id/0

• http://russellmaret.com/
• http://russellmaret.blogspot.com/2016/06/hungry-dutch-typographic-adventure.html
• https://newsletter.lib.utah.edu/russell-marets-character-traits/
• http://centerforbookarts.dreamhosters.com/index.php/Search/Index?search=russell+maret

Ted Widmer is Distinguished Lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York. He has also directed research centers and libraries, notably at the Library of Congress, Brown University and Washington College, and he was a speechwriter and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. In 2019, he curated the Morgan Library’s Whitman Exhibit, “Walt Whitman: Bard of Democracy.” He writes actively about history for the public, including the “Disunion” series in the New York Times, which chronicled the Civil War, and “The Year of the Crack Up,” which described the upheavals of the year 1919, also in the New York Times. In 2020, his book, Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washiington was published by Simon and Schuster.

Deirdre E. Lawrence was the Principal Librarian at the Brooklyn Museum from 1983 to 2017. Before Brooklyn, she was Associate Librarian at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and previously worked at other cultural institutions. She received her M. L. S. from Pratt Institute and has studied art history on the graduate level. At the Brooklyn Museum she established the Museum Archives and implemented many projects to preserve and make accessible extensive research collections. Deirdre has written numerous articles and lectured frequently on the research collections held in the Libraries and Archives as well as other collections held by the Brooklyn Museum. Deirdre has curated several exhibitions including Walt Whitman’s Words: Inspiring Artists Today (Center for Book Arts, 2019), Walt Whitman & the Art of the Book: Contemporary Visions (Poet’s House, 2015), and Artists Books (Brooklyn Museum, 2000). She has contributed essays to several publications including Camerado, this is no book / See the Moon? (Co-Ed, 2018), Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW, 2010), and Cultural Signposts: Art and Text Together Through the Ages (Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, 2001). In addition to her work with the Whitman Initiative, she is a member of discussion groups regarding the collection, criticism and display of artists’ books.

Karen Karbiener, president and founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, is a Whitman scholar and teaches at New York University. Winner of the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright recipient, she was the curator of “Whitman and the Promise of America” (South Street Seaport Museum, NY, July – December 2005), “Poet of the Body: New York’s Walt Whitman” (with Susan Tane; Grolier Club, NY, May – July 2019), and most recently, “Robust American Love: Avid Visions by Walt Whitman and John Ransom Phillips” (BlackBook Presents, Brooklyn, August – September 2019).