King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA) is a contemporary art museum and social practice art project inside and in partnership with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, a Pre K–5th grade public school in NE Portland, OR. Founded in 2014 by Portland State University professors Lisa Jarrett and Harrell Fletcher, KSMoCA connects public school students with internationally renowned contemporary artists through collaborative workshops, exhibitions, artists lectures, and site-specific commissions. Students learn through experience about museum practice and careers in the arts by participating as curators, preparators, artists, gallerists, writers, and docents.

A.R.T. Library Program Questionnaire gathers insights from librarians and publishers within the Program's distribution network to reconsider and reflect on what it means to make art books public today.

• How would you characterize the books that you publish?

We publish catalogs for exhibitions at KSMoCA, an art museum embedded within a public elementary school. Our rotating exhibitions feature a body of work by a visiting contemporary artist and artwork by a class of students made in collaboration with the artist. Both are exhibited together in the main hallway of the elementary school. The public and entire school of over 350 students, teachers, and staff are invited to an opening reception and artist talk in the library.

Like traditional exhibition catalogs, our books document the artist’s work and its installation in the museum. They also position the work of the students, the collaborative and participatory processes behind its creation, and their voices—through interviews and wall label commentary—on an equal level as the visiting artist.

• How would you define the audience for your books?

The catalogs expand our exhibits and museum to multiple audiences, from parents whose children participated in the project, members of the public who attended the exhibit opening, teachers building a classroom library, or readers around the world who collect books about art.

• Has the way books are distributed changed in the last five years? (If so, how does it affect what or how you publish?)

Our books have always been printed on demand through Kindle Direct Publishing and available for purchase worldwide through Amazon. Copies of our books are available to the school community for free and are available to check out from the school library. Also, they can be downloaded for free as PDFs from our website.

• When did you start participating in A.R.T.’s Library Program?

Our first donation was made in 2023. Prior to that we started receiving books from the program in 2019 for our onsite art library within the school library.

• How do you decide what to donate to the program?

In early 2020, just before the Covid shutdown, KSMoCA mounted the Hank Willis Thomas: Freedom Ride exhibition at Dr. MLK Jr. School. In tandem with Willis Thomas’ show at the Portland Art Museum (PAM), we engaged the artist at Dr. MLK Jr. School to create political advocacy button slogans and the For Freedoms digital quilt, both projects inspired by the artist’s work. In addition to the KSMoCA show, Dr. MLK Jr. School fifth graders wrote interpretive wall labels for a selection of Willis Thomas’ works on view at PAM. These labels were printed and mounted just like any other museum wall label, and students who wrote the content were able to see their work reflected in a more traditional contemporary art space during a tour of the exhibition with museum staff. We also worked with students involved with KSMoCA’s sister program, the Harriet Tubman Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice, to write essays that were included in the exhibition catalog for Freedom Ride. Since an audience for his work exists and continues to grow with his many exhibits and commissions, A.R.T. Library Program helps expand the distribution of the exciting work he did with KSMoCA, especially to educators who are interested in connecting students with contemporary artists.

• How does A.R.T.’s Library Program complement your distribution strategies?

Even though our publications are available as free downloads on our website, with A.R.T.’s Library Program we can reach readers in non-digital environments—from schools to prisons and beyond—who might not have easy access to technology. Plus, we value what can be learned and felt from the tactile experience of physical books. While we’ve participated in and hosted art book fairs over the past two years, A.R.T. Library Program helps us get KSMoCA books into the hands of people outside our Portland, Oregon region.