The Lantern Library – Recommended Reading at Home

The Lantern Library is a curated, publicly available reference library that accompanies the current exhibitions at Esker. Exhibiting artists are invited to suggest book titles that reflect their current or past research interests or that offer insight into their work. The result is a highly personalized reading list that serves as an alternative method of accessing and discussing the works in the gallery and of generating ideas about, or connections between, work and artists that may not be visually obvious.

The Little Lantern Library

If you are visiting Esker with little ones, an imaginative selection of children’s books chosen by gallery staff and volunteers is available in the Lantern to help you explore some of the themes and ideas in our exhibitions from the comfort of our cozy reading nook.

Current titles recommended by the artists:

Books

Life Among the Qallunaat (1978),
Minnie Aodla Freeman

Difficult Women (2017),
Roxane Gay

Bruce Gilden (2011),
Bruce Gilden

Arctic Dreams and Nightmares (1993),
Alootook Ipellie

I Love Dick (1997),
Chris Kraus

Photography and the Art of Seeing (1979),
Freeman Patterson

I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating (2019),
Alec Soth

Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl (2012),
Tiqqun

The Sun, My Father (1988),
Nils-Aslak Valkeapää

Paintings

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,
La Grande Odalisque, 1814, oil on canvas

Music

Siouxsie and the Banshees, Dear Prudence, 1984

Celina Kalluk, Siipinngua, recorded in 2010

Uaajeerneq-Song, various artists, Inuit: 55 Historical Recordings of traditional music from Greenland, 1905-1987

TV Series

Chef’s Table (2015–), Netflix