The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Martin Barooshian Art Trust are pleased to announce that the MFA has added 35 additional pieces by Martin Barooshian (1929-2022), to its collection. The acquisition includes important woodcuts and etchings as well as one monotype and three preparatory drawings. The MFA acquired its first work by Barooshian in 1950.

Barooshian, a Boston native, was an American surrealist painter and an exceptionally accomplished printmaker. Barooshian rose to prominence during the 1950s and 60s, but his fame waned over time. There has been resurgent interest in his artistic contributions, including the publication of a biography and catalogue in 2020, and the MFA’s acquisition represents a substantial step in his rediscovery.

In a New York City art world insistent on non-figurative conformity, Barooshian struck out on his own path. The resulting abstract surrealist prints and paintings, which fuse art historical, modern, and contemporary influences, are unique, singular, and increasingly considered by many to be ahead of their time. With a printmaking output spanning 60 years, Barooshian’s oeuvre incorporates a broad variety of media: woodcuts, lithographs, etchings, and monotypes. His colleague and friend Willem de Kooning called Barooshian “a printing magician.”

Barooshian garnered his earliest national recognition when “discovered” by John Taylor Arms for his woodcuts, which fused traditional techniques and content with modern form and color to convey the paranoia and loss of innocence of the Atomic Age—perhaps tinged with hopefulness. Soon thereafter in 1952, the Library of Congress acquired his first major woodcut portfolio. Perhaps Barooshian’s greatest contribution to printmaking was with a method known as color viscosity printing, which dominated his output starting about 1956. During his stay at Atelier 17 in Paris, Barooshian evolved the technique, pushing its limits in order to reach his artistic vision of imagined realities and dreamscapes. By incorporating various methods including hard ground, soft ground, mezzotint, and aquatint on a single zinc plate, Barooshian created complex, polychromatic images solidifying his reputation as one of viscosity printmaking’s most important masters.

Patrick Murphy, Lia and William Poorvu Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the MFA, called Barooshian “a consummate printmaker, whose intriguing and oddly overlooked body of work deserves to be celebrated alongside that of mid-century contemporaries like Hayter, Helen Phillips, Fred Becker, and Gabor Peterdi.”

“This extraordinary gift includes a number of compositions in multiple impressions—state proofs showing the evolution of work on the plate, or variant inkings demonstrating the artist’s characteristic experimentation with color, as well as preparatory drawings, and will make the MFA a destination for the study of Barooshian’s prints,” said Murphy.

As part of the Hammer’s ongoing, $100-million renovation and expansion project at its Westwood building, a new Grunwald study-storage facility for works on paper is nearing completion, expected in early spring.

A 3,100-square-foot exhibition gallery dedicated to the paper medium was publicly unveiled on Sunday February 13, 2022 — a Hammer first. It launched with part one of a two-part survey of acquisitions from the last decade.

The gallery and the Grunwald are now front and center on the museum’s third floor, adjacent to the Hammer’s main galleries, rather than being tucked away. Call it a coming-out party for works on paper, as an exceptional collection sees a new light of day.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-11/commentary-hammer-grunwald-center

Two Etchings by Eva Hesse (1936–1970)
Hesse produced an extraordinarily inventive, influential body of work in her short career. Pioneering the use of unusual materials—including textiles, latex, and fiberglass—and individual sculptural forms, she ushered in a new conceptual era of sculpture and installation art in the 1960s. Although not known for her prints, Hesse produced at least 14 etchings, 17 lithographs, and two woodcuts early in her career.

The Gallery has acquired two etchings that show Hesse's early fascination with texture, versatility of line, tensions between positive and negative space, and the expressive, vulnerable qualities of material and structural form.

These works join one print, two drawings, and one sculpture by Hesse already in the Gallery's collection.

Five Works on Paper by Emma Amos (1937–2020)
The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired five works on paper (four prints and one collaged paper-pulp work) made from the 1960s to the early 2000s by the artist and activist Emma Amos. These works are examples of Amos's engagement with issues of feminism, racism, and power dynamics in imagery that does not always appear overtly political.

Amos was the youngest and only female member of the important New York artist collective Spiral, which was formed in response to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Founded by Richard Mayhew, Romare Bearden, and Hale Woodruff, the collective served as a forum for African American artists to discuss their role in America's rapidly changing political and cultural landscape. They explored ideas such as whether "black art" can or should be defined—issues that continue to be debated today.

Amos went on to contribute to the important feminist art journal Heresies and purportedly participated in the Guerrilla Girls, an activist group of anonymous women artists who protest injustices in the art world. Throughout her career Amos faced prejudice against both her race and gender, and she primarily showed her art in exhibitions that featured black and/or women artists. Amos's employment and family life also limited her artistic production, contributing to her mostly small and often experimental printed editions that have slight variations, such as collaged or other unique elements, as seen in several of the works acquired by the Gallery.

These five works on paper join one print diptych by Amos in the Gallery's collection.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to view images of these recent acquisitions.

Over the past 47 years the Brandywine Workshop and Archives has produced a diverse collection of over 1,400 original artworks, hosted over 500 multicultural artists from the US and around the world, and now have more than 800 prints displayed in satellite collections at 14 institutions across North America. In additional to our visiting artist programs, BWA sponsors high school and college internships in printmaking, digital media and collections management.

Artura.org is the nation’s first free online database of culturally diverse artwork and artists, and an open educational resource for researchers, curators, educators and students. A free, interactive digital archive of culturally diverse art and artists, Artura.org gives visitors access to a wide variety of voices, experiences, and histories not found in any other single open-educational resource. Our platform allows users to interact with art that represents contemporary cultures, histories, and traditions from around the globe.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to access the collections database and to browse featured exhibitions.

Join us in creating a publicly sourced archive of a single day, articulated and comprehended through printed newspapers of the same day across the world.

Sign up to send us your local newspapers dated 10 March 2020, and receive our exhibition catalogue(s) free of cost + be an acknowledged contributor to a major exhibition of newspapers from around the world that will be held in London in March 2021.

Calling all newspaper-lovers and print-aficionados to take part in our project ‘Drafts of history’: exploring the contested domains of news, ephemeral artefacts, circulation networks, publics, and archives.

This is a call for participation in our project to collect newspapers from around the world. We invite all interested individuals – wherever you happen to be on the globe – to send us a physical copy of your local newspapers dated 10 March 2020. The process of participation is relatively simple (see below), and there are also some material benefits of taking part.

Why 10th March? Because it connects to the second part of our project: creating a historical, comparative snapshot of the world in newspapers on a single day. We are working to digitise a collection from 10 March 1888– a treasure trove of newspapers from across the world, which we will also be exhibiting in the coming year. We are looking to bring together March 1888 with a ‘first draft of history’ for 10 March 2020.

This is an occasion to celebrate your local newspaper scene, the diversity of voices, scales, and readership – you could choose your community paper, ones you encounter daily, or ones that you have never read, independent papers, the diaspora or foreign language press in your city, and so much else. Everything is welcome! We only need a handful of people from any one city/country to be enthused and willing to commit to sending us newspapers by post – but we recognise that the task is nonetheless enormous, so any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

Please note: the newspapers will need to be sent by post to London (UK) at their own expense by those who are willing and able to participate and contribute to this project. Details of mailing and a PO Box address will be provided to participants who sign up on the project website. We are particularly looking for volunteers from less well-represented parts of the world and can also offer help with the mailing costs if you are able to take on a more active role in collecting, so please get in touch using the link below or by emailing editor@contextual-alternate.com.

Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information and to participate.

Krannert Art Museum has amassed the largest museum collection of early modern Dutch political prints outside of Europe, thanks to strategic acquisitions guided by Maureen Warren, KAM’s curator of European and American art.

During the past year, KAM has added more than 100 Dutch political prints from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries. They portray a broad range of themes and formats, and add a wide variety of printmakers to KAM’s already strong collection of works on paper. In addition to political propaganda and satire, the newly acquired prints include views of the daily lives of women that depict their relative autonomy and independence in Dutch society. Other prints show images of Dutch naval power, trade, war and crime.

Warren, a leading print curator and scholar of early modern Dutch art, is curating the exhibition, planned for fall 2021 and provisionally titled “Fake News and Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Golden Age.” The museum received a grant from the Getty Foundation to support the exhibition and an accompanying publication through The Paper Project, a funding initiative focused on prints and drawings curatorship. The exhibition will look at how images were used to put a favorable spin on events and persuade people to believe a certain retelling of history.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to read the full, illustrated press release published by Warren's colleagues at KAM.

The Van Gogh Museum has acquired a total of 91 prints by Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). The sizeable collection reveals the extent of Pissarro’s experimental approach and contains innumerable unique pieces, including a sought-after self-portrait by the artist.

The prints are from the Samuel Josefowitz Collection, and were amassed over many decades with great passion, expertise and patience. The entire collection has now been acquired by the museum. Together, the works provide a comprehensive overview of the artist’s printed oeuvre.

Camille Pissarro was one of the leading and most productive representatives of Impressionist printmaking, creating some 200 etchings and litpgraphs during his career. His art was a major source of inspiration for Vincent van Gogh.

From 1 March to 26 May, 42 of the acquired prints will be on display in a special presentation in the print cabinet in the Exhibition Wing of the museum.

Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information.

In December 2018, Jasper Johns donated 23 prints to the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University in honor of art historian Richard “Dick” Field, who served as DAC's curator from 1972 to 1979. Field, who curated exhibitions of Johns' work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Davison Art Center, published three books about the artist: Jasper Johns: 1960–1970 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1970); Jasper Johns Prints: 1970–77 (Wesleyan, 1978); and The Prints of Jasper Johns, 1960–1993: A Catalogue Raisonné (Universal Limited Art Editions, 1994).

Johns' gift joins the Davison Art Center’s collection of more than 25,000 works of art. Please visit the 'External Link' below for the full article, published by Olivia Drake in the university's "News @ Wesleyan" blog.

Renowned contemporary Chinese artist Hung LIU (LIU Hung 刘虹) and Trillium Graphics master printer David Salgado have donated 55 works of art to the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art that exemplify the innovative mixed-media techniques they developed in which printed and painted elements are embedded in layers of resin to evocative, gestural effect.

“The JSMA’s traditional Chinese collection forms the foundation of our holdings, but we have few works by contemporary Chinese artists,” says Jill Hartz, JSMA Executive Director. “This is a truly transformative gift that will strengthen our collection and enhance both research and teaching by our curators, faculty, and students for years to come.”

According to Anne Rose Kitagawa, JSMA’s chief curator and curator of Asian art, “Because these works bridge the gap between traditional printmaking and painting, Hung playfully refers to them as za zhong, or ‘bastard paintings,’ acknowledging their hybrid nature.”

Developed for the artist as a proprietary technique by Trillium Graphics, the process’ medium of transparent resin allows the layering of images and gestures embedded in Liu’s oil paintings and other works to fully reveal themselves from surface to depth, as it were, within the visual field of each za zhong work.

“Liu’s subject matter references traditional China--especially women’s history—politics, cultural identity, memory, displacement, and social justice,” says Kitagawa. “Through her art she imparts dignity upon ignored or reviled members of society.”

In 2011, in recognition of the za zhong works produced at Trillium Graphics, Hung Liu received the Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking award from the Southern Graphics Council. Trillium is the proprietary owner and publisher of the za zhong works.

Liu was born in Changchun, China, in 1948 and grew up in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Following her high school graduation in 1968, she was sent to labor in the countryside for four years as part of Mao Zedong’s plan to “re-educate” members of the intellectual class. During this time, she photographed and drew portraits of peasant farmers and their families. In 1972, she went to study art and education at the Revolutionary Entertainment Department of Beijing’s Teachers College, from which she graduated in 1975. She then taught at the Jing Shan School and hosted a weekly televised art lesson called “How to Draw and Paint.”

A Professor Emerita at Mills College in California, Liu is known primarily for her rich, colorful paintings based on historical photographs of Chinese prostitutes, refugees, street performers, soldiers, laborers, prisoners, and children, which she envelopes in veils of dripping linseed oil that, in her words, “both preserve and destroy the image.” In this way, she invents what she calls “weeping realism” that brings faded photos back to life, “summons ghosts,” and expresses the passage of time and the erosion of memory.

David Salgado is the founder, director and owner of Trillium Graphics. Trillium has been making prints and creating cast resin mixed media with prominent bay area artists since 1979. These artists include Nathan Oliveira, Wayne Thiebaud, William Wiley, Paul Wonner, Joseph Raffael, Morris Graves, Theophilius Brown, Eric Fischl, Enrique Chagoya, and Liu Xiao Dong.



As an academic art museum, the JSMA plans to use the Hung Liu za zhong acquisitions as the basis for a series of courses that will culminate in a special exhibition produced in collaboration with University of Oregon faculty and students. Already, two of the works are on display, one in a Chinese exhibition entitled “Reflections of the Cosmic Web: Intricate Patterns in Daoist Art,” on view through April 2019 and the other in the recent-acquisitions show, “A Decade of Collecting,” on view through September 2, 2018.

During its most recent Collections Committee meeting, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) announced a relationship with the Paulson Fontaine Press to be the only East Coast repository for all of its prints by African American artists. The museum also added nearly 40 historic, modern and contemporary works to its permanent collection of American art at the quarterly meeting.

"With the acquisition of these prints, PAFA is positioned to become the East Coast archive of works on paper by African American artists from that press," said Jodi Throckmorton, PAFA Curator of Contemporary Art. The West coast repository is the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

"This collection of prints represents some of the most important artists working today," Throckmorton said. "The Paulson Fontaine Press is one of the most experimental presses and that is evident in the quality of the 129 prints we acquired." Featured artists include Radcliffe Bailey, McArthur Binion, Kerry James Marshall, and Gary Simmons, among others.

"Paulson Fontaine Press is honored to place a powerful collection of prints by African American artists with PAFA," said Pam Paulson, the Press' Founder and Master Printer. "The leadership at PAFA shares our commitment to diversity in the arts as well a passion for printmaking, highlighted by their recent acquisition of the Brodsky Center. We are delighted to have an opportunity to share our program with Philadelphia's vibrant community for years to come."