Terry Belanger, professor at UVA and proprietor of the rare book room, has been granted a ‘genius award’ by the MacArthur Foundation for his work in revealing “the magic” of the book as an art form. Belanger, 64, created the Rare Book School at Columbia University in 1983; it served essentially as a model for rare book programs around the world. He later moved the school to UVa after the university offered him an academic appointment.
More on the award-winning MacArthur fellow here .
Book not as an art form
I was a student of Terry’s, though I am not in the rare books field anymore. I always felt the point of descriptive bibliography, which is what we did with rare books, was to show that structure of the book form and the process that went into making the book were also important clues in understanding the text of the book.
For example, a book may say it’s printed in Paris in 1635, but a study of the paper, type faces and binding style may prove that it was printed in Amsterdam. Why was it surreptitiously printed? Knowing this gives the scholar reason to look more critically at the text.
So what we did was not just look at book as art forms, but as part and parcel of the intellectual content of the book.
And that is Terry’s genious and contribution to libraries (and the need to preserve books as physical evidence), but also to literary criticism.