GEMSS Keynote | “Sammelband Scientia: Collecting Dürer & Printing Instruments”

KEYNOTE LECTURE: 11AM-12:30PM 

Dr. Suzanne Karr Schmidt 

Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Newberry Library 

Suzanne Karr Schmidt (PhD Yale) is the first female George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Newberry Library. An historian of early modern art, books, prints, and science, her monograph, Interactive and Sculptural Printmaking in the Renaissance, appeared in 2018. Her playfully interactive Newberry exhibition, currently titled Pop- Up Books Through the Ages, is scheduled for February- June 2023 and examines this overlooked artform from the medieval to the modern era. Previous exhibitions include her Newberry exhibition Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta, which she co-curated in 2020, and her 2011 Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily Life. 

“Sammelband Scientia: Collecting Dürer and Printing Instruments” 

Albrecht Dürer’s three books on perspective, fortifications and anatomy were often bound together, meriting closer inspection of these personalized ‘Sammelbände.’ His were not the only collections of scientific note, as albums of printed sundials, astrolabes, and other measuring devices also survive. Together, these constitute an ephemeral record of early modern experiments with instrumentation on paper and the growing demand for them and the manuals they accompanied.