As part of the exhibition
Ann Hamilton: the common S E N S E, we invited the public to share selections from their reading that described an exchange of touch. We received hundreds of submissions on the Tumblr site
Readers Reading Readers, which was set up specifically for the exhibition. Excerpts ranged from paragraphs from novels to fragments of poetry to a few lines from the newspaper. Selected contributions were printed on individual sheets of paper and distributed throughout the Henry galleries for visitors to assemble into an individualized commonplace book and guide to
the common S E N S E. A commonplace book is a tool for collecting and organizing excerpts from books and other written works that provide its reader with easy access to ideas or arguments for a variety of situations.
“Just as a book connects the near at hand to the far away,” Ann Hamilton writes, “touch transverses our interior and exterior worlds.”