Title: Reading rooms for Al-Mutanabbi Street
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"I have been drawing and sewing since childhood and making books for many years, during a career that has involved librarianship, editing, and other work in publishing. Art and textiles courses at City Lit, London, led to the art foundation course, which I completed in March 2010; in September 2012, I completed the MA Visual Arts (book arts pathway) at Camberwell College of Art. My project title was 'Everyone's everyday journey: growing older;' it looked at aspects of memory, functioning, and language in adult life - topics which I am developing in further work"--Artist's personal website (viewed June 19, 2015).
Subjects: Violence, Pictorial works, Booksellers and bookselling, Bombings, Iraq War, 2003-2011, Protest movements, Books and reading in art, Intellectual life, Social conditions, Censorship, Terrorism in art, In art, War and civilization, Vehicle bombs, Visual literature, Specimens, Artists' books, Memory, Collective memory, Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, England, London
People: Margaret Cooter
Time periods: 21st century