David Senior
David Senior is Chief of Library and Archives at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). Until July 2017 he was Senior Bibliographer at the Museum of Modern Art Library, where he managed collection development, including the library's artists' books collection.
Senior lectures often on the history of artists' publications and contemporary art and design publishing. Senior's curated exhibitions of MoMA Library materials include: Access to Tools: Publications from the Whole Earth Catalog, 1968–74 (2011); Millennium Magazines (2012); Please Come to the Show (2013); Ray Johnson Designs (2014); The Electro-Library: European Avant-Garde Magazines from the 1920s (2016); Back in Time with Time-Based Works: Artists' Books at Franklin Furnace, 1976–1980 (2016-17).
Please Come to the Show, a book documenting his exhibition of artists' invitations and show flyers from the MoMA Library, was published by Occasional Papers in 2014. Senior serves on the Primary Information and Yale Union board of directors and also organises The Classroom, an events programme for Printed Matter's annual New York and LA Art Book Fairs. Senior edited an artist book series through Printed Matter and the New York Art Book Fair from 2008-2014, which included publications with Dexter Sinister, David Horvitz, Emily Roysdon, Aaron Flint Jamison, James Hoff and Eve Fowler.
Publications
- Access to Tools: Publications from the Whole Earth Catalog 1968-1974, Portland, OR (?): Publication Studio, 2011, 77 pp. [1]
- "Page As Alternative Space Redux: Artists' Magazines in the 21st Century", Art Libraries Journal 38:3: "Artists' Publications", Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp 10-17.
- editor, Please Come to the Show, London: Occasional Papers, 2014.
- with Sarah Hamerman, "Screen Life and Shelf Life: Critical Vocabularies for Digital-to-Print Artists' Publications", Art Libraries Journal 41:3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 171-181.
- Posts on MoMA blog
Interviews
- Madeline Weisburg, "Interview with MoMA Librarian David Senior on Artists' Books", Artbook, 6 Oct 2013.
- Steven Heller, "Introducing The Electro-Library", Print, 12 Apr 2016.
