The Librarian
The Librarian
Decommissioned library book covers and a typed letter
2025
The Librarian was a one-off installation that contained decommissioned library book covers mounted on the walls, floor and ceiling of the Phone Booth Gallery. The small gallery was formerly the phone booth at Hotel Sequoia in downtown Redwood City, the current home of the Center for Creativity. Both the outside and inside book covers were featured, along with a typed letter by a fictitious 90 year old former librarian Beatrice Hull. Beatrice Hull was the maiden name of Kent’s grandmother.
The letter reads:
Dearest Reader,
My mother was born in 1912 in Redwood City, California. She raised me to understand how the world works, and books were always part of our life together. There’s a photo of me in 1938—two years old, sitting in my crib with a book—taken by my father with his Kodak Brownie. Books taught me to be okay with who I am and to care about other people’s struggles.
There are things I don’t like about today: the decline of penmanship, the decline of reading for pleasure, and the hysteria of banning books—many about real people’s lives and issues we should be talking about, not banning, burning, or stuffing in a closet. I’m uneasy with artificial intelligence pretending to be trustworthy, tossing out snippets with no context or responsibility. And I’m still stupefied by our government’s attacks on knowledge, especially science.
So here you are, inside Hotel Sequoia’s decommissioned phone booth, surrounded by book covers with their insides torn out. Local libraries removed them from circulation and saved them for me to make things with. Think of them as proxies for the more than 10,000 instances of canceled books—affecting over 4,200 unique titles—in U.S. public schools during the 2023–24 school year. I lived through the Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 1950s and wish the fear of others wasn’t happening all over again.
Here is a question for today, tomorrow, and the future of your children:
Whatever happened to knowledge?
Beatrice Hull, 2025
Prospectus
The Librarian’s Apron by Kent Manske and Nanette Wylde.
Decommissioned book covers on ribbon
2025
The Librarian’s Apron was created for The Libraian exhibition and continues to exhibit as a stand alone work of art. At the opening reception, the apron was worn by our artist friend Connie Guidotti who role played as the librarian Beatrice Hull. Miss Hull entertained gallery visitors with the story we invented.
