SPECTACULAR NEW INSTALLATION OF 2,000 BOOKS UNVEILED INSIDE ES DEVLIN’S FIRST EUROPEAN RETROSPECTIVE
A vast rotating library has been unveiled at the Design Museum in London, as the newly-announced finale of a major exhibition exploring the work of British artist and designer Es Devlin.
An Infinite Library is a remarkable new kinetic sculpture featuring over 2,000 books that have informed Devlin’s worldview. Arranged by colour, many are well thumbed copies drawn directly from Devlin’s studio bookshelves, including Chaos by James Gleick, The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. The eight-metre-wide triangular bookshelf rotates on a circular mirror, invoking Umberto Eco’s description of a library as a compass of the mind.
Es Devlin photographed in Es Devlin: Other Worlds at the Design Museum. Photo credit Daniel Devlin @susakpress
The installation evokes the power of books to transport us to other worlds, and to inhabit worldviews other than our own. All the displayed books are titles that have personal significance to Devlin, and have helped shape her life and art. Visitors will experience the artwork illuminated by projections and a soundscape of Devlin’s voice reading selected passages aloud.
This is the fourth in Devlin’s series of sculptural libraries, following Library of Light at Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Library of Us on Faena Beach, Miami and Library of the Four Winds at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Specially commissioned by the Design Museum, it’s the first of Devlin’s sculptural kinetic libraries to be displayed inside a museum and is the spectacular final room of Devlin’s new show.
Many of the books featured in An Infinite Library have been kindly provided by Penguin Random House UK in support of the National Year of Reading, and they will be donated to local schools and charities when the exhibition ends.
Es Devlin photographed in Es Devlin: Other Worlds at the Design Museum. Photo credit David Parry for the Design Museum
Es Devlin said: “I am moving my studio and practically my entire 30- year archive into the Design Museum for this show. It’s an immense privilege to have this opportunity to share my working process and practice with visitors and to create a new large scale library installation within a museum for the first time.”
Tim Marlow, Director and CEO of the Design Museum, said: “Our exhibitions at the Design Museum often explore what might best be called 'design in an expanded field’, a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach which breaks down many of the boundaries around creative practice. Es Devlin shares this ethos. Her remarkable boundary-blurring work across art, activism, poetry, sculpture, music and architecture is the embodiment of enlightened design thinking and her emphasis on collective experience and audience participation makes this exhibition one of the most exciting and ambitious to be staged in our galleries.”
Es Devlin: Other Worlds is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, a long-term supporter of both Es Devlin and the Design Museum.
Es Devlin: Other Worlds 02 October 2026 — 04 April 2027 at the Design Museum