In this Letterform Lecture with Mike Hudson, we will explore the surprisingly complex history of printing for readers who are visually impaired.

Louis Braille published his monumental work introducing the Braille System in 1829. That book, the Procede pour ecrire les Paroles… was embossed in raised letters, a system invented by Valentin Haüy. Only six known copies survive today. Books in alternative tactile formats had been available in France since 1786, but it would not be until the 20th century that braille would be adopted around the world.

In this Letterform Lecture, Mike Hudson will lead us on an exploration of the surprisingly complex history of printing and embossing for readers who are blind or visually impaired.

This and all Letterform Lectures are a public aspect of the Type West postgraduate certificate program. Register to attend remotely.

Please join for the annual Gillett G. Griffin Memorial lecture with guest Russell Maret, book artist and letter designer.

The British private press holds such a strong gravitational pull over the bibliophilic imagination that it can be difficult to acknowledge that there is a thriving private press tradition in the twenty-first century. Appearance has a lot to do with it: the books of today don’t look like the books of the Kelmscott, Doves, Ashendene or other British presses, so surely they don't fall into the same category. But is a private press book designated by its physical attributes or by the motivations behind its making? Is it a thing only, or an idea also? When closely examined, the historical circumstances from which the British presses grew have many parallels within the conditions behind the current Book Arts revival. The dislocations incumbent within the industrialized society of the late nineteenth century have only been exacerbated in the digital age, further alienating people from the objects they make and consume, and sparking an equally fervent desire to find meaning and balance in one’s work and life. In this talk, Russell Maret will discuss these broader ideas through the lens of his own career making books and typefaces, and sketch out some emerging directions within the contemporary private press.

For more details and how to register either for in-person or virtual, please visit external link.

On May 19, Krystle Attard Trevisan (Institute of English Studies/MUŻA – Malta National-Community Art Museum) will present a virtual lecture, 'How to Build a Print Collection in Malta, 1791–1833: Insight from the Purchase Inventory of Count Saverio Marchese.' For details and registration, please visit external link.

The Book and Print Initiative was founded in 2017 to bring together scholars of books, printed material, and printing, at all career stages, across the School of Advanced Study (SAS). It is an umbrella for new and existing projects. As part of the UK’s research centre for the humanities, it provides a national focal point for the interdisciplinary, global study of word, image, and other written content from before the print era (manuscripts, palaeography, codicology) through to its future (digital humanities).

Christina Weyl is an independent scholar and curator with expertise on twentieth-century American printmaking. She received her BA from Georgetown University (2005) and completed her MA and PhD in art history at Rutgers University (2012, 2015). Her recent book, The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York (Yale University Press, 2019), which grew from her dissertation, highlights the nearly 100 women artists who advanced modernism and feminism at Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking studio located in New York City between 1940 and 1955. With the support of a major grant from the Getty Foundation, she is currently co-curating an exhibition with Lauren Rosenblum for the International Print Center of New York focusing on Margaret Lowengrund and her pioneering effort to establish The Contemporaries as a hybrid printmaking workshop/gallery. She has published in Art in Print, Print Quarterly, and Archives of American Art Journal and contributed to several anthologies and exhibition catalogues. From 2014–2018, she served as Co-President of the Association of Print Scholars, a non-profit professional organization she co-founded in 2014. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked for IFPDA member Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl, which represents the publications of the Los Angeles–based artists’ workshop Gemini G.E.L.

In fin-de-siècle Paris, the Nabis turned to the medium of color lithography to explore new modes of expression. This practice, however, was technically complex and thus required the involvement and expertise of master printer Auguste Clot. This lecture examines Clot’s collaboration with the Nabis and the printer’s significant role in the production of their avant-garde prints.

Natalia Lauricella is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the history of print, modern art, process, and labor, particularly in nineteenth-century Europe. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Southern California. Her current project traces the network of dealer-publishers, printers, and artists who produced and marketed limited edition original color lithographs as part of the development of modern art and the art market in 1890s France. Focusing on the technical and creative role of master printers, this work recasts the history of modern art through the lens of artisanal labor, artistic process, and collaboration. Research for this project has been supported by a Fulbright grant to France, the Borchard Foundation, the Visual Studies Research Institute at USC, and USC’s Department of Art History. Prior to pursuing her PhD, Natalia worked as a curatorial assistant of collections and exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and contributed to a number of exhibitions including Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe (2014), Agnes Martin (2016), and Mystical Symbolism: The Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris, 1892–1897 (2017).

Using the exhibition States of Play: Prints from Rembrandt to Delsarte as a starting point, curator Elizabeth Rudy and conservator Christina Taylor will lead a dynamic conversation about printmaking with a group of Boston-area printmakers.

The speakers will discuss the role of revision, correction, and adjustment in the printmaking process. Each artist will present an example of how they’ve reworked one of their projects, and the group will explore how editing and change play a fundamental role in the creation of fine prints.

Spanning four centuries, the works in States of Play unveil the layers of creative revision behind finished prints. Central to this process is the concept of a “print state,” which traditionally refers to a version of a print that precedes the final product. By decoding creative choices that the artist pursued or abandoned in each successive step, the exhibition helps uncover the full breadth of experimentation and demystifies printmaking terminology and techniques.

Led by:
Elizabeth Rudy, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Division of European and American Art
Christina Taylor, Assistant Paper Conservator, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies

Printmakers:
Cicely Carew
Susan Denniston
Catherine Kernan
Debra Olin
Rebecca Leopoldina Torres
Christopher Wallace

For more information and to register please visit the external link below.

Artists Stephanie Santana and Tanekeya Word discuss the work of Emma Amos with curator Laurel Garber. They will share how figures like Amos inform and inspire the collective Black Women of Print, of which they are both members and which Word founded. They will also present for the first time new works they created in homage to Amos.

This talk is offered in conjunction with the exhibition "Emma Amos: Color Odyssey," and is made possible with the support of a Collaboration Grant from the Association of Print Scholars.

This Fall a two-volume catalogue of all prints produced and published by the Liefrinck dynasty has appeared in The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish series (Sound & Vision Publishers). Compiler Jeroen Luyckx (Illuminare - KU Leuven) and editor Huigen Leeflang (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) are delighted to invite you to the virtual book launch on Thursday 9 December 2021 at 17:00 CET.

The Liefrinck family was a Netherlandish dynasty of printmakers that consisted of three generations and was active for over a century. From c. 1500 until the turn of the seventeenth century various family members were involved in printmaking and publishing, producing a highly diverse output. This fully illustrated catalogue brings together almost 400 woodcuts, etchings and engravings, including dozens of undescribed prints, states and editions. To order the volumes, please visit www.hollstein.com.

Programme
17:00 Welcome by editor Huigen Leeflang (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
17:10 Lecture on the Liefrinck dynasty by compiler Jeroen Luyckx (Illuminare - KU Leuven)
17:40 Questions
18:00 End

This online event is free of charge, but registration is required. You can register by providing your name and e-mail via the external link. If you do, you will receive an e-mail with all practical information in the week of the event.

Join us for the virtual opening lecture for the Memorial Art Gallery's newest exhibition, Renaissance Impressions: Sixteenth-Century Master Prints from the Kirk Edward Long Collection! Bernard Barryte, an expert on this collection and author of the catalog, will discuss printmaking techniques and how the prints were marketed and prized by collectors. He will also discuss Mannerism, the imaginative style of art that was dominant in Europe during the 1500s, as well as the ways that these images can be interpreted.

For questions about this program, please contact Chiyo Ueyama at cueyama@mag.rochester.edu. For general visitor information, visit mag.rochester.edu/about.

To register, please visit the external link below.

To explore photography’s chemical and material history, this talk examines the materiality and meaning of 19th-century iron and silver-based photographs that document and celebrate industrial growth in Pennsylvania, particularly railroads and steel mills. By placing these photographs, including platinum, cyanotype, and albumen prints, as well as stereographs in dialogue with each other, the ways that artists have documented transformations to the landscape in the past is reconsidered in terms of the rapid pace of current environmental degradation. Questions of how photography was used to respond to, and express social, emotional, or political perceptions of land, and how these meanings have changed in the 21st-century from an increasing awareness about the human impact affecting climate change will be explored.

For more information and to register please visit the external link below.