Buenos Aires celebrates print culture with rare book and graphic art fairs this weekend

This weekend, Buenos Aires is hosting two simultaneous celebrations of print culture that tell a story about what people still want to hold in their hands. At the Museo de Arte Moderno on Avenida San Juan, the Feria del Libro Raro opens Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 8 p.m., free admission. Across the city in Chacarita, the Feria Migra runs the same hours at LABA on Fraga Street, asking only a non-perishable food item, clean clothing, or school supplies as entry—donations going to support the Bachillerato Popular Mocha Celis.

The rare book fair will gather nearly fifty publishers, specialized bookstores, and artisanal bookbinding workshops under one roof. You'll find editions like a 1960 Emecé publication of José Hernández's Martín Fierro poems illustrated by Carlos Alonso, a Singer sewing pattern sampler with eighty-three cardstock pages, and a new edition of Gustav Klimt's postcard collection. At 2 p.m. both days, the husband-and-wife team from El Molino del Manzano will demonstrate traditional paper-making, stirring pulp in a wooden vat while visitors watch. Publishers like Buchwald, Urania, Kalos, and Ampersand will be present, alongside specialized bookstores including The Book Cellar & Henschel, Rayo Rojo, and La Teatral.

Agustín D'Ambrosio, who organizes the fair and studies written culture and reading history at the University of Buenos Aires, explains that a rare book requires two things: it must be scarce—difficult to find because few copies exist—and it must be worth seeking, possessing qualities that make it valuable. The definition is not about age. A book can be rare because it was hand-written, sewn rather than glued, printed with movable type, or published without a barcode or ISBN. Raúl Veroni, who runs the Urania press, will present an unpublished speech by Argentine writer César Aira, originally delivered in Berlin in 2016, printed in an edition of just 120 copies. Saturday at 5 p.m., David McKitterick's essay "The Invention of Rare Books," newly published by Ampersand, will be presented with a librarian and D'Ambrosio. Sunday at the same hour, editors Sol Correa, Ariel Fleischer, and bookseller Javier Moscarola will discuss rare books and artisanal publishing.

Gabriela Comte, general editor at MAMBA's publishing house, welcomed the fair's return: the museum sees it as natural to host specialists in unusual books and their audiences. "The book world is complicated," she said, "but the people behind the Rare Book Fair bring admirable dedication." The fair had a trial run at MAMBA in 2021, moved to Ruth Benzacar Gallery in 2023 and 2024, and now returns to where it began.

Meanwhile, Feria Migra frames itself as a dual necessity—celebrating not just the printed object but the processes, relationships, and voices that make each publication possible. Independent presses like Barba de Abejas, based in City Bell, and Dobra Robota, which specializes in music publishing, will exhibit. The fair includes screen-printing workshops, framing demonstrations, visual poetry, fanzines, and work by artists like Chilean illustrator and ceramicist Catalina Cartagena and Argentine artist Juan del Puerto. Issue 11 of Revista Balam will launch, focused on "queer archives as spaces of resistance."

What's striking is the proliferation itself. Buenos Aires now hosts the main Book Fair, the Independent Publishers Fair, plus specialized fairs for rare books, used books, humanities and social sciences, and antiquarian volumes. Similar growth is happening in Rosario and La Plata. Veroni notes that his business partner, designer Gustavo Ibarra, calls book fairs "the new rock and roll." The comparison is apt: both concerts and book fairs are growing, both gather people in physical space to feel something that moves through the body—whether the texture of handmade paper or the vibration of sound, surrounded by others. In an era when artificial intelligence is being inserted into nearly everything and digital platforms promise to dematerialize experience with environmental rhetoric as cover, people are choosing to show up, in person, to touch books and meet the people who make them.