Curatorial Statement

In PORCH: A Library, we — along with the commissioners of this year’s U.S. Pavilion, and our many colleagues who suggested titles for inclusion — think of the library as being, like the porch, a place of welcome. In such settings, people meet and mingle, learn and dream. At its best, the porch serves as a frame for camaraderie, a shelter for connection with others.

Libraries are social infrastructure, and in our curatorial process for PORCH: A Library, we’ve sought to emphasize that such sites of sociable contact appear everywhere: on steps, stoops, balconies, trains, and buses. In parks and plazas; classrooms and museums. In neighborhoods and cities that take seriously the commitments of people to one another and to our planet.

We hope with this collection of books to reinforce the importance of these threshold locations where private shades into public, and “I” becomes “we.” As you browse this library, you might assemble your own readings of such spaces, entangled as they are with legacies of injustice and environmental degradation, invigorated as they must be by forces of generosity and civic responsibility. The porch, like the library, is porous. What cannot, and should not, be compromised are the precious opportunities each provides for democratic encounter.