I bought a cool book a few weeks ago and was planning to blog about it… but then I discovered that there was more to the story– an exhibition at the Morgan Library!

Here is a partial list of the kinds of lists included in “Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations,” an exhibition beginning Friday at the Morgan Library & Museum: lists of bills to pay, things undone, failings in oneself and others; lists of people to call, stuff to buy, errands to be accomplished. There are also lots of lists of artworks, real and imaginary. That’s because all the material in the exhibition comes from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution — mostly, as the curator of the exhibition, Liza Kirwin, remarked the other day, from drawers and folders marked “Miscellaneous.”

The book is also called Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Collections of the Smithsonian Museum. There are lots of great images, many of them, like the one above, obviously taken straight out of a notebook or sketchbook. If you can’t make it to NYC to see the exhibition, definitely check it out!

Read more at ‘Lists,’ Exhibition at Morgan Library & Museum – NYTimes.com.