Ninth Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, with Neal Ambrose Smith (8 March 2024)

Born January 15, 1940, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana. Since the 1970s, Smith has been creating complex abstract paintings and prints and has received numerous awards, including the Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, New York, l987; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters Grant, 1996; the Women’s Caucus for the Arts Lifetime Achievement, 1997; the College Art Association Women’s Award, 2002; New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, 2005; Visionary Woman Award, Moore College, Pennsylvania, 2011; election to the National Academy of Art, New York, 2011; Living Artist of Distinction Award, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 2012; The Woodson Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015, among many others. Neal Ambrose Smith, descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana, is a contemporary Native American painter, sculptor, printmaker, and professor. He has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, as well as many workshops nationally, numerous of which, alongside his mother, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. In their lecture, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Neal Ambrose-Smith discussed thirty years of exploration in solvent-free printmaking and embracing environmentally-friendly practices through teaching, exhibiting, and advocation.

Technical support was provided by Simon Levenson of The Drawing Foundation.

Eighth Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Johanna Drucker (5 May 2023)

Johanna Drucker is Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, fine art, and digital humanities. In her lecture, entitled “Invisible Writing: Disciplinary Intersections and Blind Spots,” Ms. Drucker drew on her experiences in poetics, publishing, and scholarly work to address the often invisible role of written language across disciplines.

Technical support was provided by Simon Levenson of Drawing America. 

Seventh Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Timothy Clark (13 May 2022)

Sixth Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Curlee Raven Holton (7 May 2021)

Curlee Raven Holton, Director of the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, delivered the sixth annual APS Distinguished Scholar Lecture via Zoom on Friday, May 7, 2021. In his lecture, Dr. Holton discussed his personal and professional journey to becoming an artist and the creative possibilities he discovered through printmaking. Reflecting on his own experiences and relationships with Robert Blackburn, Elizabeth Catlett, and David C. Driskell, among others, Dr. Holton traced how his passion for collaboration – so deeply inherent in the printed medium – grew out of a desire to build a community with a shared belief in the transformative power of art, and how that passion has been, and can be, a source for self-liberation and social engagement.

Technical support was provided by Simon Levenson of Drawing America and Allison Wucher of Master Drawings New York.

Fifth Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Mari Carmen Ramirez (24 January 2020)

Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art & Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, delivered the Fifth Annual APS Distinguished Scholar Lecture in New York City on January 24, 2020. Her lecture, “Marks, Materials, and Matrices: Experimental Printmaking and Drawing Practices in Latin America,” takes the audience through her personal and professional journey through prints and drawings in Latin America, focusing primarily on experimental practices by artists known for pushing the limits of these venerable media. In addition to highlighting the achievements of the Puerto Rican Graphic Arts Movement, Ramírez engages the work of a handful of major artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela who have constituted the focus of her research and curatorial endeavors over the last three decades.

The lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Fourth Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Antony Griffiths (25 January 2019)

Antony Griffiths, former Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, delivered the Fourth Annual APS Distinguished Scholar Lecture in New York City on January 25, 2019. His lecture on “Print Catalogues and Databases: Past, Present, and Future” chronicled his long-term work on the British Museum’s online print catalogue and the implications of this work for other institutions and future scholarship on the history of prints. The lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Third Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Rémi Mathis (26 January 2018)

On January 26, 2018, Rémi Mathis, Curator, Department of Prints and Photographs at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, gave APS’s third Distinguished Scholar Lecture at the CUNY Graduate Center. Mathis’s talk, “A Means to an End: The Process of Understanding French Prints,” examined 17th-century French printmaking and its broader relationship to cultural, economic, and political forces during this period based on the holdings of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Second Annual Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Harriet Stratis (12 May 2017)

APS’s second Distinguished Scholar Lecture was delivered on May 12, 2017, by Harriet Stratis, former Senior Research Conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago [retired]. Stratis’s talk, “There’s More to the Story: Integrating Paul Gauguin’s Artistic Practice into an Exhibition Narrative,” presented Stratis’s research on Gauguin’s works on paper in preparation for the exhibition, “Paul Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist,” opening at the Art Institute of Chicago on June 25, 2017. This exhibition represents the culmination of years of research that began in Chicago the late 1980s and celebrates publication of the Art Institute’s online scholarly catalog dedicated to Gauguin’s paintings, ceramics, and graphic works in the museum’s collection. The lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Inaugural Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Peter Parshall (25 September 2015)

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