Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair

As part of Multiple Fairs BU College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts presents the Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair including concurrent panels and a workshop curated by the Boston Center for the Arts. Multiple Fairs is a collaboration between the organizers of Multiple Formats (Boston University) and the Boston Art Book Fair (Boston Center for the Arts). Visit the Multiple Fairs’ website to learn more.

Multiple Fairs’ Friday, March 21 Programming Schedule:

Pop-up DS4SI Sunday Social News

11:15 AM-12:00 PM

We often consume the news alone–reading a newspaper over breakfast, doomscrolling on our phones, or listening on the go. DS4SI's "Sunday Social News" intervention asks, “What changes when we consume, critique, and even produce news together?” Join us as we prototype a new collective space and ritual for the news.

Print Media as a Tool for Collective Solidarity, moderated by Jameson Johnson with DS4SI, Fortunately Magazine, and Maggie Wong

12:00-1:00 PM

This panel will bring together artists and collectives whose practices engage with print media as a tool for disseminating information, galvanizing action, and promoting solidarity. The conversation will examine how newsprint, pamphlets, magazines, and other print publishing initiatives can be a platform for organizing in the present while also creating an archive for the future. With artists Cierra Michele Peters and Mark Hernandez Motaghy, co-founders of Fortunately Magazine, artist Maggie Wong, presenting Unity Newspaper, and Design for Social Interventions (DS4SI). Moderated by Jameson Johnson, Founder & Editor in Chief, Boston Art Review.

Stitching together with Maggie Ruth Haaland

2:00-3:30 PM

We do not consent to division. Instead, we dream into interdependent communities and know that we are stronger when we show up for each other. Join us for a stitch circle in the midst of the book fair–a time to slow down and hand stitch together, as we co-create a large fabric scroll representing our collective vision.

The first half hour of the circle will be more structured and Maggie will offer gentle instruction on a few basic stitches to get us started. From there, participants will be given a fabric patch, needle and thread with which to create a block to keep or to weave into the larger scroll and folks can drop in to make their marks. The piece will be finished and sewn together after the event, and kept in a to-be-determined community space for display.

Speculative Archives, moderated by Jackson Davidow with Caleb Cole, Ebony Gill from Boston Urban Archive, and Dell Marie Hamilton

4:00-5:00 PM

This panel will look at archives and ephemera as they are used by artists and activists: how they are created, how they circulate, and how relationships between art and archives manifest in the world of print and art. We will look at how archives can work to challenge dominant narratives, and at the erasure of archives, and ask questions about who and what are included, and who and what are missing in these compilations. We will look at how artists and other creative practitioners unearth and share lost histories, examine the role of publication in making an archive or an artwork, and look at the role of print in this process.

Coming to Boston University March 20-22, 2025, Multiple Fairs brings together artists, designers, publishers, students, and artist book enthusiasts to celebrate the dynamic intersection of art, design, and publishing. Following Thelot's Thursday night keynote, Friday (March 21) will feature a day of workshops and demonstrations on topics ranging from Riso printing to calligraphy and creative coding. On Saturday, over 150 exhibitors will present their publishing practices at the Multiple Fairs Art Book Fair. The BCA is curating a concurrent slate of panels and participatory programs adjacent to the fair, in the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground.

Multiple Fairs is free and open to the public. It is sponsored in part by the Wagner Foundation, and with support from BU's School of Visual Arts.