Fox-Adler Lecture September 15
Mark Dimunation
Rare-book expert Mark Dimunation will present the annual Fox-Adler Lecture at Skidmore
College on Thursday, September 15.
His lecture, titled "Strange and Marvelous Books: Leonard Baskin and the Gehenna Press,"
will take place at 5:15 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. The event
is free and open to the public.
The Gehenna Press, founded by Baskin in 1942, printed elegant volumes of poetry, natural
history, and classics, many illustrated with Baskin's own woodcuts or other artists'
engravings. Baskin died in 2000, but Gehenna is still operating and has been called
the most successful private press of all time.
Dimunation is chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library
of Congress, where he is responsible for the development and management of the largest
collection of rare books in North America. A specialist in 18th- and 19th-century
English and American printing, he has lectured extensively about fine-book collections
and presses and has authored a number of exhibition catalogs.
The annual Fox-Adler Lecture honors the Fox family and the late Hannah Moriarta Adler,
a dedicated patron of the arts and education. In 2005, the Fox family endowed the
lecture series in perpetuity.
