The Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University in New York has hired Samantha Rippner, who previously served as curator of modern and contemporary prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for fifteen years, as its new associate director. In her new role, Rippner will help oversee Neiman Gallery’s exhibition program, coordinate special projects and educational initiatives at the Center, and strengthen external partnerships.

Rippner first joined the Met while earning her Master’s degree from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and has held the positions of research assistant and curatorial assistant before being named curator in 2002. During her tenure, Rippner organized the museum’s first mural commission “Nicola Lopez’s Unbuilding Things” (2013) as well as the exhibitions “Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914–1939” (2008), and “The Prints of Vija Celmins” (2002) among other shows. She also worked as guest curator at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University in California and, most recently, as a freelance curator.

“Samantha’s resume speaks for itself, and we’re absolutely thrilled to have her on staff,” said Tomas Vu-Daniel, who has helmed the Neiman Center since it was founded in 1996. “When it comes to the study of printmaking, she brings decades of valuable experience, and a new pair of eyes that will allow us to continue meeting the highest standards for our shows, works, and new projects.”

(Press release, Columbia University, 11/26/2019)

The National Gallery of Art recently announced two new prints and drawing curators among other recent additions to the curatorial staff: Shelley Langdale and Brooks Rich. Langdale began her Gallery tenure in May as curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings. Rich also joined the Gallery in May as associate curator of old master prints.

Shelley Langdale, Curator and Head of Modern Prints and Drawings
Langdale refined her curatorial expertise while working with some of the nation's foremost collections of works on paper: first the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, then the Cleveland Museum of Art, and, for the past 17 years, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. While her primary focus has been modern and contemporary works on paper, Langdale has organized or collaborated on an unusual range of projects, from an exemplary study and exhibition of Pollaiuolo's 15th-century engravings in Cleveland to an exhibition of Yoshitoshi's magnificent color woodcuts in Philadelphia. Widely admired for her professional activity and generosity, she successfully mentored a long line of curatorial fellows and interns at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was deeply involved with the city's artists and art organizations. She is also the current president of the Print Council of America, the national professional organization of curators of works on paper.

As the head of modern prints and drawings at the Gallery, Langdale oversees approximately 60,000 prints, watercolors, drawings, and multimedia works on paper. Her initial projects at the gallery include participation in an upcoming set of installations celebrating women artists and donors for the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment; addressing the storage and documentation needs of the Gallery's growing collections of workshop and artist archives (Gemini G.E.L., Crown Point Press, and the prints of Jasper Johns, among others); and an exhibition drawn from the Gallery's collection of modern works on paper. Langdale holds an MA from Williams College and a BA from Bowdoin College.

Brooks Rich, Associate Curator of Old Master Prints
Rich recently completed his PhD in early 16th-century Netherlandish engraving at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote his dissertation "The Mystery of the Monogram AC at the Margins of Early European Printmaking." Rich has an impressive range of curatorial experience in the departments of prints, drawings, and photographs at several leading institutions, including curatorial fellowships at the Rijksmuseum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he organized the exhibition Rockwell Kent–Voyager: An Artist's Journey in Prints, Drawings, and Illustrated Books (2012). Rich has also worked at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In his new role at the Gallery, Rich will balance the demands of cataloging, researching, caring for, and organizing exhibitions about the Gallery's collection of prints and illustrated books dated before 1900. In addition to his PhD, Rich holds an MA from Williams College and a BA from Bowdoin College.

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 Wichita Art Museum proudly announces the establishment of the C. A. Seward Print Study Center, a museum focus on cultivating the premier collection of Prairie Print Makers and offering exhibition and education programs on this Wichita artist collective.

The Prairie Print Makers group was formed on December 28, 1930, when 11 of the best artists in Kansas gathered in the Lindsborg studio of artist Birger Sandzen. These Prairie Print Makers planned to offer affordable artwork that would appeal to collectors. The Print Makers created etchings, silkscreens, linoleum cuts, block prints, and lithographs. Within four years of its founding, the group boasted 47 active members and over 100 associate members. The collective continued until 1965--creating 34 gift prints between 1931 and that year.

Leading the formation of the group was artist C. A. Seward (pictured at left). Seward settled in Wichita in 1907 and soon after established one of the few fine printing services outside of New York City, wrote a foundational text on lithography, organized low-cost traveling exhibitions, and helped to establish the Prairie Print Makers. His efforts fostered a vital arts community in Wichita with a singular goal--to bring art into everyone's life.

PRINT FORUM ON AQUATINTS
This Forum is held in conjunction with WAM’s fall exhibition "Charles Capps: Prairie Print Maker" honoring one of the 10 founders of the Prairie Print Makers. Capps was born on September 14, and the C. A. Seward Dinner immediately following the Forum will include a toast on what would have been the artist’s 121st birthday.

The afternoon Print Forum is free and open to the public. Reservations are required for the C.A. Seward Dinner.

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

The Getty Research Institute (GRI) announced the appointment of Naoko Takahatake as Curator of Prints and Drawings on May 29, 2019. Please visit the 'External Link' below to read the full press release.

The Museum of Modern Art announces the appointment of Lanka Tattersall as curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints. Her responsibilities will include participating in the Museum’s acquisitions program, the installation of the collection galleries, and the development of special exhibitions and catalogues. Tattersall will join the Museum on July 1, 2019.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to read the full press release from MoMA.

The Art Institute of Chicago announced that Jay A. Clarke will join the museum on April 1, 2018, as the new Rothman Family Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings. Clarke will oversee the department’s ambitious efforts in research, publishing, acquisitions, and exhibitions to shape an innovative and exciting vision for the museum’s internationally recognized collection of nineteenth-century works on paper.

Kevin Salatino, the Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Seale Chair and Curator of Prints and Drawings, shared: “Jay has superb curatorial credentials and an outstanding reputation as a strong leader, generous mentor, respected scholar, and creative collaborator. Her curatorial and research experience at the Art Institute from 1991-2009, and her widely respected work now at the Clark and beyond, assure a powerful combination of knowledge and expertise to make her an exceptional addition to our department, and to our museum.

In her work since 2009, as the Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the esteemed Sterling and Francine Clark Institute (the Clark) in Williamstown, Massachusetts, Jay has organized twelve exhibitions, including: The Strange World of Albrecht Dürer (2010), Spaces: Thomas Struth and Candida Höfer (2011), The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec (2013 and 2017), Machine Age Modernism (2015), Whistler’s Mother: Grey, Black, and White (2015), Photography and Discovery (2016), Japanese Impressions: Color Woodblocks from the Rodbell Family Collection (2016), No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts (2017), and Picasso|Encounters (2017).

In her tenure there, Jay built the Clark’s collection with an impressive range of purchased and gifted acquisitions, published and lectured extensively, mentored numerous graduate student interns, and taught eight seminars in the Graduate Program in Art History at Williams College. In 2016, she was a Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University.

Crawford Alexander Mann III has joined the curatorial staff at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as the curator of prints and drawings. He began work April 3. Mann joins 12 curators currently on staff for contemporary art, photography, sculpture, contemporary craft, folk and self-taught art, Latino art, 19th-century painting, a chief curator who specializes in 20th-century art and a curator of contemporary interpretation.

Mann’s responsibilities include research, exhibitions and acquisitions related to the museum’s collection of prints, drawings and watercolors dating from the 18th century to the present. His research interests include Italian American artistic exchange on the Grand Tour, artists of the American South, the impact of East Asian watercolor and printmaking traditions on American art and the evolving visual constructions of masculinity, femininity and gender.

“Alex brings a global approach to American graphic arts,” said chief curator Virginia Mecklenburg. “His expertise in the relationship between American and international artistic currents, as well as the reciprocal influences among graphic arts, painting and sculpture will enrich the museum’s presentation of exceptional prints and drawings. We are delighted to welcome him.”

Before joining the museum staff, Mann was the Joan and Macon Brock Curator of American Art at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va., from 2011 to 2017. While there he curated exhibitions about Abraham Lincoln, Georgia O’Keeffe and the civil rights movement, as well as oversaw a full reinstallation of the museum’s American art galleries, which reopened in 2014.

Mann earned a bachelor’s degree in art history and religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002. He received a master’s degree in art history in 2003 and a master’s degree in philosophy from Yale University in 2005. He was a Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at SAAM in 2008. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate at Yale University where he is completing his dissertation titled “When in Rome: Italian Travel and the Pursuit of the Ideal Male Body in Antebellum American Art.”

The Art Gallery of Ontario recently announced the appointment of four new curators, including Alexa Greist as the new Assistant Curator, Prints and Drawings. Greist is a specialist in Renaissance and Baroque prints, and comes to the AGO from the Yale University Art Gallery, where she contributed to several notable exhibitions including Francesco Vanni: Art in Late Renaissance Siena and Meant to Be Shared: The Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints. Greist received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation focused on Italian printed drawing books. This topic reflects her wider interest in the use and role of prints to spread knowledge and ideas of all kinds, beginning with the development of printmaking techniques in the 15th century and continuing through its use as a medium today. Prior to her appointment at Yale, Greist held positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Whitney Museum of American Art announced that Kim Conaty will be joining the curatorial department as Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints. Currently serving as Curator at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Conaty will begin working at the Whitney in mid-July.

As Curator at the Rose Art Museum, Conaty has overseen the museum’s renowned permanent collection of modern and contemporary art and leads the curatorial program of special exhibitions, collection installations, and related programming. Collection stewardship has been of paramount importance to Conaty’s work at the Rose, highlighted in her current exhibition Collection at Work (2017), which turns one of the museum’s galleries into a publicly accessible active work space for cataloguing, digitization, and conservation initiatives.

“I'm excited to return to the Whitney, an institution for which I have the deepest respect and admiration,” said Conaty. “Following a tremendous period of growth, the Museum has broken new ground in its exhibition program while also making a decisive commitment to the care, research, and presentation of its collection. I look forward to collaborating with the Museum’s exceptional team, and to developing future projects and research initiatives that will highlight the richness and diversity of its extraordinary collection of drawings and prints.”

Between 2008 and 2015, Conaty served as the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr., Assistant Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Prior to MoMA, Conaty served as Biennial Coordinator for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, following previous posts as a curatorial intern and researcher at the Whitney on the exhibitions Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe and Picasso and American Art. She has also held positions at the Clark Art Institute; the Grey Art Gallery, N.Y.U.; the Guggenheim Museum; and the Harvard University Art Museums.