MARY ELLEN BARTLEY • MORANDI’S BOOKS

EXHIBITION FROM 3 JUNE TO 12 JULY 2025
OPENING: TUESDAY 3 JUNE 2025 (6-9PM)

As part of our annual curatorial invitation, we are pleased to present Morandi’s Books, a photographic series by American artist Mary Ellen Bartley. The exhibition will be on view from June 3 through July 12, 2025.

Rooted in a 2020 residency at Casa Morandi in Bologna, Morandi’s Books offers a contemplative look into the personal library of Giorgio Morandi, the twentieth-century Italian painter renowned for his quiet and precise still life compositions. Bartley, whose practice explores the physical and formal qualities of books, approached Morandi’s library not just as a subject, but as a point of intimate connection with the artist himself.


Known for her minimal, poetic style, Bartley photographs books as sculptural forms, capturing their textures, edges, and subtle presence. Her images are painterly in tone and meticulous in composition, reflecting both a reverence for the printed object and a deeper inquiry into time, memory, and perception. Her photos are alive with questions— about what we do and don’t see and the stories we tell. Yet the spirit of her work provides a reflective response, a respite, from an increasingly noisy and chaotic world.


When the pandemic abruptly ended her time in Bologna, Bartley returned to her Sag Harbor (NY, USA) studio and continued the series through a series of quiet interventions. She began incorporating modest materials — such as paper, vellum, and the aged glassine that often wraps older volumes — into her compositions. These additions gently disrupt the surface of the image, introducing new layers of space and meaning.

Bartley’s subtle use of natural light, nuanced selection of focus and acute sense of geometric arrangement often imbue her photographs with a quiet restraint and meditative stillness. With her core subject of books remaining constant Mary Ellen continues to find innovative techniques to expand the range of her imagery as each new book collection calls for a fresh approach, xerography, re-photography and collage among them.

Morandi’s Books is at once a tribute and a transformation. It reflects Bartley’s deep engagement with Morandi’s restrained visual language while expanding her own exploration of books as vessels of both form and feeling. The result is a body of work that feels at once personal and universal — quietly resonant, rigorously observed, and grounded in a shared artistic sensibility.

Mary Ellen Bartley was born in New York, receiving her BFA from Purchase College, SUNY. Bartley has been invited to work in the libraries of celebrated artists such as the experimental theater director and artist Robert Wilson, the painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, the designer and bibliophile Karl Lagerfeld and the 20th century master Giorgio Morandi, whose quiet still life paintings have been an essential source of inspiration from the beginning of her practice. Her work has been exhibited at numerous institutions including the Queens Museum, NY; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Morgan Library and Museum, NY; Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY; and The Watermill Center, NY. Bartley has taken part in numerous artist residencies, including at Casa Morandi, Bologna, Italy; 7L, Lagerfeld Library, Paris; The Queens Museum, NY; Visual StudiesWorkshop, Rochester, NY; Penumbra Foundation, NY; and Watermill Center, NY. Bartley’s work is in numerous collections, including MOMA library special collections, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN; The Morgan Library and Museum, NY; McEvoy Foundation, San Francisco, CA; The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ; Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY; and The Watermill Collection, Watermill, NY. One of the works from the series « Morandi’s Books » has just entered the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.