5 March — 24 May 2026
Mickey Smith:
Morphologies
Opening Night: Thursday, March 5 • 5:30 - 7:30PM
Artist Talk: Friday, March 6 • 11AM - 12PM
Presented proudly in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival
Bound Vol. II (detail), 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Over the past two decades, Mickey Smith has documented significant cultural shifts in academic and public libraries, primarily across the United States, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the South Pacific. Her work highlights the library's role in knowledge stewardship, capturing the evolution from traditional card catalogues and stacks to digitization and artificial intelligence.
Through this confluence of Smith’s oeuvre, Morphologies explores the dynamic nature of library lifecycles with striking imagery, including the historic chained library at Hereford Cathedral in England, capturing in-situ bound periodicals. Smith’s work considers not only the ways in which the book is revered, but how libraries adapt to changes, including repurposing buildings and transitioning from physical books to online resources.
Morphologies is a survey of Smith’s library-based photographic series and related site-specific installations. Together, these works invite reflection on our evolving relationship with books-as-monuments. How might perceptions of the power of knowledge shift when magazines and periodicals are transformed into colourfully bound yet stoic volumes, endless rows archived in basement stacks? Smith’s use of scale signals both the authority of publication and the potential absence left behind when materials are removed from circulation—countless subjects have already been retired, with many more to follow. What is the impact when they are eventually removed from shelves—discarded, recycled, repurposed, destroyed, or perhaps replaced by artificial intelligence?
Originally organised by Law Warschaw Gallery at Macalester College in Smith’s hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Morphologies includes work from the artist’s multi-year visiting residency at the college’s DeWitt Wallace Library. The Arts House Trust presentation premieres several additional works for the exhibition’s arrival in Aotearoa, where Smith is based. Selections from As You Will, Denudation, and Volume—her award-winning, long-form study of bound periodicals in library stacks—anchor the exhibition.
This exhibition is presented in association with Law Warschaw Gallery at Macalester College, Minnesota, with special thanks to Heather Everhart, Director and Curator. With support from: Sanderson Contemporary, John Leech Framing and Skar Image Lab. Presented in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2026.
About the Artist
Mickey Smith (US/NZ) is an award-winning conceptual artist and photographer. Smith’s photography is a striking and poignant reflection of human history through her documentation of simple, provocative titles found on library shelves and most recently, second hand bookstores around the world. Her work continuously explores the state of entropy within libraries, as we witness information systems shift, digitize and collections become deaccessioned.
Smith’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally, in Aotearoa and throughout USA. Her works belong to public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art Library, North Dakota Museum of Art, Sheldon Museum of Art and Weisman Art Museum. She has received grants and awards from the McKnight Foundation, CEC Arts Link, Americans for the Arts and Creative New Zealand.
Mickey Smith holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Photography from Minnesota State University Moorhead (1994) and a Diploma in Jewellery Design from Hungry Creek Art & Craft School in New Zealand (2019). Mickey is an advocate for Harbour Hospice Auckland and a founding artist member of Studio D3 in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckand.
Mickey Smith
Mickey Smith (US/NZ) is an award-winning conceptual artist and photographer. For over two decades, her practice has been engaged with a longstanding inquiry into libraries, books and archives — in particular the social significance of their physical existence or disappearance.
Smith’s photography is a striking and poignant reflection of human history through her documentation of simple, provocative titles found on library shelves and most recently, second hand book stores around the world. Her work continuously explores the state of entropy within libraries, as we witness information systems shift, digitise and collections become deaccessioned.
Events & Public Programmes
Opening Evening
Thursday, March 5 • 5:30 — 7:30PMIn Conversation: Christina Barton & Mickey Smith
Friday, March 6 • 11AM — 12PM. Free but please RSVP.