Broward County Library's Bienes Museum of the Modern Book , The Dianne and Michael Bienes Special Collections and Rare Book Library, and the Florida Center for the Book are pleased to present the twelfth annual Florida Artists’ Book Prize exhibition.

The criteria for entering the competition are:

• The entry must be created or published in an edition (i.e., more than one copy), but cannot be a trade edition (i.e., produced commercially by a publishing house for sale nationally or internationally) nor can it be one-of-a-kind.
• The artist's primary residence must be the State of Florida.
• The book entered in the competition must have been created or published in the calendar year 2008.
• Completed entry forms and a copy of each book must be received in the Bienes Museum by January 12th, 2009.
• The prize may be won by the same artist only two years in a row. Artists who have won the prize two years in a row are encouraged to enter a book(s) the third year, but it will not be eligible to win.

The prize-winning artists' book becomes the property of the Bienes Museum. All other books entered will be returned after the judging, except those titles selected for inclusion in the Florida Artists' Book Prize Exhibition.

The Florida Artists’ Book Prize was jointly established in 1997 by Broward County Libraries Division’s Bienes Museum of the Modern Book and the Florida Center for the Book. Serving on the jury this twelfth year of the competition were: Arthur Jaffe of the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts (Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL); Ruth and Marvin Sackner of the Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry (Miami, FL); Jean Trebbi, retired director of the Florida Center for the Book (Fort Lauderdale, FL); and Kate Rawlinson, Assistant Director, Education, The Wolfsonian-FIU. Serving as facilitators were Tara Zimmermann, program coordinator of the Florida Center for the Book (Fort Lauderdale, FL); and Jim Findlay, librarian of the Bienes Museum of the Modern Book (Fort Lauderdale, FL).

This year’s prize of $2,000 was awarded to Marie Marcano (Surfside, Florida), for her book: “Our own version of … Journey to the center of the earth”. Forty-two other artists’ books were entered in the competition by thirty-one different Florida artists. All of the books selected for the exhibition are shown here in their entirety.

Bienes Museum of the Modern Book
Broward County Main Library, 6th Floor
100 S. Andrews Ave.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

Click here to browse the Bienes Museum’s 2008 Florida Artists' Book Prize Exhibition collection online.