The Idea of a Human Rights Museum shortlisted for Manitoba Book Award
A book co-authored by professors Karen Busby (Law), Adam Muller (English, Film and Theatre) and Andrew Woolford (Sociology) is up for a Manitoba Book Award.
According to the University of Manitoba Press website, The Idea of a Human Rights Museum is “the first book to examine the formation of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and to situate the museum within the context of the international proliferation of such institutions.”
The Idea of a Human Rights Museum is nominated in the design and illustration category.
“We wanted IHRM’s contents and the design to be both elegant and accessible as these are also important qualities for human rights museums,” said Prof. Busby. “From the beginning, I wanted to use Antoine Predock’s beautiful, early abstract sketch of the CMHR’s exterior on the cover. This sketch arouses curiosity and invites people to take a further look.
“The frontispiece—a photo by Clarence Abrams of the completed museum’s exterior on a stormy day—is an interesting counterpoint to the cover. Many contributors provided images to complement their text and while we were limited by budget to using black and white images (except on the cover and frontispiece), these images nonetheless provide important context for the contributor’s text.
“Jess Koroscil was responsible for the book’s overall design, maintaining elegance and accessibility in many of the small details such as the amount of text on each page, the dark pages between sections and the simple presentation of the images.”
The book is comprised of sixteen essays considering political, cultural and architectural contexts within which the museum evolved, physically and conceptually. It draws comparisons between the CMHR and institutions emphasizing human rights and social justice elsewhere in the world.
Read more about the book or order it on the University of Manitoba Press’ website.