The rise of contemporary artist-made tarot decks is being documented by MIT Libraries, describing the more than 400 decks as “unbound books” with narratives. MIT has purchased decks from crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter or directly from the artists on sites like Etsy with a particular interest in radical, feminist, queer, people of color, and spiritually and religiously diverse revisions. The idea for the MIT tarot library emerged after an MIT’s curator was staying in a hotel in Washington in 2018 when she saw a tarot deck for sale at the mini bar, according to Alex McGee, an archivist for MIT Libraries.
“That confirmed to us that tarot was having a moment,” McGee said. “If we’re arguing it’s an unbound book, how could we not create a space for it?”
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I have often described Tarot cards as perhaps the only successful hypertext book. The librarians at MIT agree.
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