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Letterform Archive Pop-Up Exhibition Curated by Debbie Millman Celebrates a Groundbreaking Book Design
Tristram Shandy, The First Modern Book is on view in the our Reading Room gallery until April 26, 2026.
Letterform Archive is honored to welcome author, artist, educator, designer, and podcast pioneer Debbie Millman as a guest curator for our latest reading room exhibition. Tristram Shandy, The First Modern Book showcases a book that, in many ways, feels astonishingly modern—even though it was first published 266 years ago in 1760.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne is one of the most original, inventive books ever created. Sterne didn’t just tell a story—he treated the book itself as a playground. The pages reveal a story that twists, turns and digresses. Entire chapters are left blank. One page is printed completely black, as it is in mourning. Another is marbled.
And at one moment, Sterne invites the reader to imagine a character by leaving a page for them to fill in themselves. The language includes graphic gestures that attempt to diagram the wild, looping path of the story itself. What makes Tristram Shandy so extraordinary is that it anticipated so many ideas we think of as modern: experimental typography, nonlinear storytelling, reader participation, and visual narrative. It is truly a precursor to the experimental books that imaginative designers and artists would begin making centuries later.
This exhibition brings together items from the collections of Debbie Millman and Letterform Archive. On view are several copies from the original publisher alongside other editions, including contemporary interpretations by Edward McKnight Kauffer, Milton Glaser, and John Baldessari. They show us that the spirit of experimentation in publishing has a much longer history than we sometimes realize. It’s a reminder that the spirit of experimentation in books—and in design itself—has always been with us, and why preserving it matters so much.
Tristram Shandy: The First Modern Book has a limited engagement in the Archive’s reading room gallery until April 26, 2026. Admission is included with a ticket to the main gallery where Piet Zwart: Brand Architect is still on view.