A book is a portal, a technology that enables a reader to cope in an unjust world. Books structure rituals; books bring back the dead. Join us as we say goodbye to our beloved Like Magic exhibition — and conduct a one-day-only sale of the Like Magic Library that has been so popular with visitors.

Like Magic Curator Alexandra Foradas and Curatorial Assistant Meghan Clare Considine spent several years assembling the collection of books, which speaks to the intersection of magic, art, and technology and includes recommendations from artists, museum staff, and others. The library represents myriad intellectual legacies, from Black and Indigenous studies to queer and feminist studies; to primary source anthologies and science fiction, and has been admired by visitors to the exhibition since 2023. Many of these books are out of print and highly sought after, but priced to sell!

The sale concludes at 5pm in MASS MoCA’s Research & Development Store with a publisher showcase with Mandylion Press founders Madeline Porsella and Mabel Capability Taylor.

About the Publisher
Mandylion Press unearths forgotten novels written by women and “weirdos” in the nineteenth century. Mandylion republishes these lost treasures in new, design-forward editions complete with new introductions and visual references. Mandylion’s first books, published in 2024, were Ethel Lilian Voynich’s The Gadfly (1897) and Emma Wolf’s Other Things Being Equal (1892)—one an incendiary tale of revolution and uncertain paternity, and the other a stormy romance between a Jewish girl and her Christian doctor. The press’s most recent publications include Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons (1862), a caustic Bildungsroman about a weird girl and her weirder sister growing up in Massachusetts, and H.D. Everett’s One or Two (1907), a metaphysical thriller about a desperate woman who turns to a seance to lose weight.