About the collection: POP-UPS And Other Illustrated Books, Ephemera, and Graphic Designs of Vojtech Kubašta (1914-1992) From the Collection of the Bienes Museum of the Modern Book

In 2001, Broward County Library’s rare book department, the Bienes Museum of the Modern Book , began collecting the works of Vojtěch Kubašta (1914-1992), the Czech paper engineer, children’s book illustrator, and graphic designer. That year, the Museum organized an exhibition from the private pop-up collection of Boca Raton, Florida resident and Fontaneda Society (Book Collectors of South Florida) member and bibliophile, Geraldine Roberts Lebowitz, entitled: Pop-up, Peek, Push, Pull, Scratch, Sniff, Slide, Spin, Lift, Look, Listen, Raise, Lower, Unfold, Turn, Open, Close.

The exhibition showcased ninety-six books, dating from the late nineteenth century to the present, from Mrs. Lebowitz’s extensive holdings. Two of the exhibit’s most imaginative and spectacular movable books, Tip & Top & Tap and the dragons, and, Tip & Top go camping, were by Vojtěch Kubašta. The two titles prompted the staff of the Bienes Museum to further investigate Kubašta’s pop-up books and from those studies the following 2004 exhibition was organized Paper Engineering: The Pop-up Book Structures of Vojtěch Kubašta, Robert Sabuda, and Andrew Binder, that featured just nineteen Kubasta pop-up books from the collection of local Fort Lauderdale resident, Gerry Bohning.

From those two presentations, a larger Kubašta retrospective took shape, and in 2005 the Bienes Museum organized one of the first major exhibitions of Kubašta’s works entitled: Pop-ups, Illustrated Books, and Graphic Designs of Czech Artists and Paper Engineer, Vojtěch Kubašta (1914-1992). Almost all of the 152 items in the exhibition were borrowed from the collections of the “pop-up lady”, Ellen G.K. Rubin, of Scarsdale, NY, and from Kubašta’s daughter, Dagmar Kubaštová Vrkljan, of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.

Since then, the Bienes Museum has accumulated the largest public institutional collection of Kubašta’s works in the United States. It includes approximately 315 advertisements, calendars, flat books, maps, models, pop-up books and greeting cards, portfolios, postcards, posters, prints, and stationery.

Click here to browse the Bienes Museum 's Vojtěch Kubašta collection online.