How far does the apple fall from the tree?

Traditionally, professions were passed down in families in much the same way as certain traits, abilities, and resources. This exhibition tells the stories of eighteen artistic families active in France, Italy, England, Scotland, and India from the late-seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. In some cases, there is a striking visual resemblance between the artworks produced by members of the same family, while in others, the styles of individual artists within a family are highly distinctive. Family relationships also overlap with the roles of teacher and pupil, business partner, and rival.

From highly refined French engravings intended to glorify King Louis XIV and archaeological views of Rome designed for tourists and architects to evocative landscapes of Britain and India, the works in this exhibition chart two and a half centuries of social and artistic change in Europe and beyond. The invention of new printmaking techniques that mimicked the tonal effects of drawings broadened the appeal of prints during this period, and they were enthusiastically collected by a growing middle class. More women entered the profession, too, and more artists traveled internationally in search of inspiration and new markets.

Amidst these significant cultural shifts, the family nonetheless remained a persistent locus of artistic production due to inherited aptitudes as well as close personal and economic connections. Drawing from the Blanton’s collection of European art, A Family Affair presents prints, drawings, and paintings created by some of the continent’s most fascinating artistic families, revealing patterns of inspiration, competition, and evolving family fortunes.

Curated by Holly Borham, Curator of Prints, Drawings and European Art, and Sarah Bane, Assistant Curator, Prints & Drawings, Blanton Museum of Art.

Field Notes from Kluane showcases new works by Christine Koch, the 2023 Kluane National Park Artist in Residence. Newfoundland-based printmaker Koch is known for linking Arctic research with art-making. This exhibition features a series of large-scale drypoint monoprints inspired by her time in Kluane, immersing viewers in the vast landscapes of the Yukon.

This traveled exhibition features selections from the Society of American Graphic Artists’ (SAGA) 89th
Annual Members Exhibition. First opened in New York City Oct 22 - Nov 3, 2024, a selection of the works from printmakers were around the country were chosen by Gallery curator, Cori Sherman North, and director, Ron Michael, to make a special encore in the Midwest. The Gallery's namesake, Birger Sandzén (1871-1954), was an active member of the print society during his lifetime, when it was known first as the Society of Brooklyn Etchers (est. 1915) and through its time as the Society for American Etchers, Gravers, Lithographers, and Woodcutters.

Highlights from the Sandzén-Greenough Family Collection features (55) examples of etchings,
engravings, mezzotints, lithographs, and color woodcuts in the Sandzén Gallery’s permanent collection of about
8,000 works on paper. Selections on display cover an astonishing international range: Japanese color woodcuts,
French revival landscape etchings, early German “Little Masters” and Albrecht Dürer woodcuts, Dutch old
masters such as Rembrandt etchings, exquisite European portrait engravings, Swedish etchings of Anders Zorn,
B.J.O. Nordfeldt white-line woodcuts, American Regional lithographs by Grant Wood and Thomas Hart
Benton, and more. Birger Sandzén was actively involved in most of the print societies around the country,
including the Chicago Society of Etchers (1910), the Print Makers of California (1914), and the Brooklyn
Society of Etchers (1915) which went through several name changes to become what is now SAGA (Society of
American Graphic Artists), before organizing the Prairie Print Makers at his home studio in December of 1930. He was
invited to be a charter member of Kansas City’s Woodcut Society in 1932, and collected all that Society’s
presentation prints issued twice-yearly through 1947. Sandzén also joined the Society of Print Connoisseurs in
1945, as a collecting member to add commissioned prints such as Gene Kloss’ 1948 drypoint, Processional-
Taos (in this exhibition), to his personal collection.
Once Sandzén was firmly settled in central Kansas and teaching at Bethany College from 1894, he
began his own collection of original prints. When his daughter Margaret married Charles Pelham Greenough 3rd
in 1942, Sandzén found a kindred spirit as his son-in-law's print collection was as varied and deep as his own.
The family collection was eventually inherited by the Greenoughs, who opened the Birger Sandzén Memorial
Gallery in 1957 to host contemporary guest artists and to share their paintings, prints, and sculpture with a wider
audience.

in 1965, the students at the new University of Warwick began to imagine the future. Sixty years later, this exhibition explores what has changed in society since that time through the lens of the University Art Collection and its prints.
The exhibition features the works of over 60 artists and includes work by an early generation of printmakers including Josef Albers and Le Corbusier; works by a new generation in the 1960s who used screen printing to make images drawn from mass media to challenge social norms. These include Peter Blake, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol. From these beginnings, later prints in the University Art Collection present a wide range of ideas and attitudes by artists including Polly Apfelbaum, Sonia Boyce, Christian Noelle Charles, Lubaina Himid, Yinka Ilori, Lakwena, Khadija Saye, George Shaw and Emma Stibbon. The exhibition includes loans of major works by Ruth Ewan, Ellen Gallagher, David Hockney, Ciara Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Shanzhai Lyric and Sin Wai Kin.
The exhibition is home to a free, working print studio where visitors can work with our studio technician to make their own monoprints inspired by the exhibition.

The Paper Biennial "Metamorphoses" features 40 selected, international artists presenting paper works in different styles: handmade paper, recycled paper, assembled, painted, chewed, glued, engraved, cut, embossed, sewn, woven, knitted and sculpted. Some 15 workshops are on offer over the 10 days of the exhibition in Moret sur Loing (near Paris).

"Process Work: Intersections of Photography and Print ca. 1825 to Today" explores the development of photographic printmaking processes and traces their historical legacy into the present day. Starting around 1825, a widespread interest in reproducing visual information faster and more cheaply fueled an explosion of experimentation in photographic printmaking techniques, with wide-ranging effects across visual culture and the fine arts. This exhibition highlights those early experiments and innovations, as well as the culture of mass-market illustration and printed media into which they first unfolded. Across a presentation of over 40 historic and contemporary photogravures, collotypes, photolithographs and relief prints, this exhibition poses the question: What are the social, aesthetic, and technological possibilities that emerge from the marriage between photography and print, both then and now?

How far does the apple fall from the tree? Just as certain traits, abilities, and resources might be inherited from a parent, professions traditionally were as well. This exhibition tells the stories of 16 printmaking families active in European cities from Antwerp to Prague in the 16th and 17th centuries. In some cases, families appear artistically tight-knit, developing a “house style” to a degree that the works of individual members are almost indistinguishable from one another and their “brand” is maintained. In other instances, members of the younger generation struck out on their own, venturing far across Europe to seek new patrons and updating their style to suit changing tastes (although still trading on their parents’ reputations). The copperplates of famous relatives were valuable inheritances that, through reprinting, prolonged the legacies of certain artistic dynasties for several centuries.

Drawing from the Blanton’s collection of historical European art, A Family Affair presents prints, drawings, and paintings created by some of the continent’s most fascinating artistic families, revealing patterns of inspiration, rivalry, and changing family fortunes.

The second part of this exhibition, A Family Affair: Artistic Dynasties in Europe (Part II, 1700–1900), opens June 28, 2025.