duck, on the other hand, was both monument and functional toy: critically, it floated. It was not merely full of air, in other words; it was necessarily full of air.

Or we could word that slightly differently. Just over forty years ago, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown published Learning from Las Vegas, an instant classic in the field of architectural theory and an important moment in postmodern theory. At one point in the book, they famously contrasted what they called ducks with what they termed decorated sheds. Decorated sheds, they wrote, are conventional structures that feature applied symbolism. Ducks, on the other hand (and here they were thinking of a roadside poultry stand in Long Island that was built in the shape of a duck) involved the impositiongraphic novel, or not? The scopic economy of the space made that question feel as pressing as any investigation of the representation of the Middle East.

Or one could think categorically. In a sense, the Bidoun Library belongs to a swelling class of instances that seem to equate reading rooms with contemporary artistic practice. Indeed, fans of contemporary art were asked to do a lot of reading this summer. The Iraqi pavilion at the Venice Biennale, for instance, presented the visitor with a range of relatively conventional artworks – and with dozens of volumes on the history and culture of Iraq. Casually laid on tea tables and aging bookshelves, the books held a certain warm charm, but the idea that anyone would actually open more than one of them