Call for Readers

“Just as a book connects the near at hand to the far away," Ann Hamilton writes, “touch transverses our interior and exterior worlds."

As part of the exhibition Ann Hamilton: the common S E N S E, we invite you to share a selection from your reading that describes an exchange of touch. These selections can be submitted via the exhibition's Tumblr, Readers Reading Readers. The title the common S E N S E references Aristotle's proposition in Historia Animalium and De Anima that “touch" is the sense common to all animal species.

Your selection could be a short paragraph or just a few words, and may be taken from any source material; for example, a book, a newspaper, a magazine, a letter, or from an online or digital source. Over the course of the exhibition, selected contributions will be printed out on individual sheets of paper and distributed throughout the Henry galleries for visitors to assemble into an individualized commonplace book and guide to the common S E N S E.

A commonplace book, originating in the ancient idea of loci communes, or “common places," is a tool for collecting and organizing excerpts from books and other written works that provide its reader with easy access to ideas or arguments for a variety of situations.

Contribute to Readers Reading Readers and become a part of the collaboration.