Brooklyn Pops Up! The History and Art of the Movable Book

Curated by the Movable Book Society
September to December 2000 The Brooklyn Public Library
Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York

The exhibition, Brooklyn Pops Up! The History and Art of the Movable Book, was curated by Ann Montanaro, Robert Sabuda, and Ellen G.K. Rubin, all of the Movable Book Society. With over 100 books, the exhibit graphically showed the history of movable books displaying the Astronomicum Caeserum (1540) among other Rennaisance books on astronomy and several books representing the Golden Age of Pop-ups (turn of the 19th century). Six other themed cases are now traveling to branches around Brooklyn.

The catalog from the exhibition, Brooklyn Pops Up, boasts 8 landmarks of Brooklyn, paper engineered by the world’s best artists. The movable cover is illustrated by Maurice Sendak and engineered by Matthew Reinhart.

The landmarks and paper engineers are:

• The Brooklyn Bridge (Iain Smyth)
• Grand Army Plaza (Bruce Foster)
• The Brooklyn Museum and Children’s Museum (Robert Sabuda)
• Coney Island (Chuck Murphy)
• Flavors of Brooklyn- eggcreams, Nathan’s frankfurters, Junior’s cheesecake (Carla Dijs & Kees Moerbeek)
• The Brownstone (David A. Carter & Tor Lokvig)
• The Carousel (Biruta Akerbergs Hansen)
• Botanical Gardens (Ken Wilson-Max & Bruce Finch) 
  Conceived by Ellen G.K. Rubin and designed by Robert Sabuda, this is the first pop-up book created by a collaboration of artists and paper engineers and is the first imprint by the Movable Book Society.

Photos from the Brooklyn Pops Up! exhibit

Read the New York Times article (Nov.27,2000) about pop-up books