About Brenda Forman

Brenda Forman began collecting pop-up books in the late 1970s. Excited by the creative explosion of pop-up art in the 1980s, Dr. Forman initially built her collection around contemporary pop-up books, cards, and ephemera. Her unexpected discovery of a 1930s Blue Ribbon pop-up at a book fair in Boston introduced her to the historical pop-up book and considerably broadened the scope of her collecting.

Through her own extensive searching and her connections with American and British book dealers, Dr. Forman has amassed an exceptional collection of nineteenth and early twentieth-century pop-up works. Today, her collection of over 800 items dates from 1858 to the present and includes entire runs of the Bookano and Blue Ribbon series, and examples of the diverse and exciting art of Voitech Kubasta, Ernest Nister, Lothar Meggendorfer, and Jan Pienkowski. Dr. Forman has made her collection available to researchers by generously placing it on deposit with Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library.

Until her recent retirement, Dr. Forman was Director of Academic Liaison and Federal Technology Policy at Lockheed Martin Corporation. Prior to this role, she held several policy-related positions in the Federal government. Dr. Forman, who has a Ph.D. in Political Science from City University, New York, has written and taught extensively on technology and space policy issues.