Centro proudly presents this exhibit highlighting artist Lorenzo Homar’s legacy within the art world. The showcase exhibit Homar: Art Binding Ties from Puerto Rico to NYC features selected artwork acquired through donations made to the archives. Also available for public viewing: an interview with Homar conducted by the Centro Oral History staff in 1983 as well as other documents from our Archives.

The exhibit runs from May 14 to September 30, 2015, and begins with the roundtable discussion on May 14 from 6-7:15 pm

The Puerto Rican Diaspora/Lorenzo Homar y la Diáspora puertorriqueña: 1928–1950.
Participants include Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, emeritus professor at Princeton University, and Antonio Martorell, artist and Homar pupil, as well as Lena Burgos–Lafuente, professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature at SUNY Stony Brook, and Cristina Pérez Jiménez, a graduate student of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. They will discuss the social, political and cultural evolution that influenced Homar with the following presentations:

Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones Introduction. Lorenzo Homar: What Happens When We Put Diaspora and the Left at the Center?

Lena Burgos-Lafuente Etching Dissent: On Homar’s Ways of Seeing

Antonio Martorell Lorenzo, Larry, Lorenzo in three times

Cristina C. Pérez Jiménez “Esos eran años muy politizados”: Lorenzo Homar's Schooling in Socially-engaged Art

Claire Van Vliet is a fine artist, illustrator, and typographer who founded Janus Press in San Diego, CA, in 1955. Van Vliet has been crafting intricate handmade books in the Northeast Kingdom for decades. Her vision and craftsmanship is internationally respected. For this artist, the medium is the message.

You are invited to join the Association of Print Scholars for a reception during the Salon de l'estampe.

Saturday, April 25
8 pm

Hosted by Donato Esposito
19th arrondissement

Details provided following RSVP by email to Katherine Alcauskas, katherine@printscholars.org

In conjunction with the exhibition, 'A Sense of Place: Modern Japanese Prints,' this symposium will bring together scholars from around the country to put modern Japanese prints into the broader historical, social, and artistic contexts that shaped the work of Japanese printmakers throughout the twentieth century. It will also include a special roundtable session with collectors and dealers specializing in modern Japanese prints.

Please also join us for a reception the evening before: Friday, April 17, 5-7pm, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania

The subject of “famous places” was one of the most influential topics in the development of landscape imagery in Japan and was initially linked to courtly poetry practices that named and praised significant sites. By the later eighteenth century, savvy commercial publishers adapted the theme to create a new set of famous locales in the city of Edo and more distant must-see destinations. Later, modern print artists referenced the landscape tradition established in ukiyo-e prints when they selected famous sites for their own work, some reflecting the changes of the twentieth century, some promoting sites of national importance, and still others reimagining what constituted “landscape” and the “famous place” in Japan as well as in the world beyond. This exhibition brings together twentieth-century prints on this theme, with works selected from the holdings of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Pennsylvania Library, and private collections.

Excelling in eerie effects and seductive textures, the late 17th-century medium of mezzotint blossomed from an amateur fascination and hobby of members of the nobility to the 18th century’s most popular reproductive printmaking method. Mezzotint engraving allowed artists to burnish soft highlights and volume into a textured copper plate that would otherwise print in a solid tone. This shading method contrasted dramatically with the standard intaglio medium, which involved either painstakingly incising engraved lines with a burin (a metal-cutting tool) or etching looser lines into a plate with acid. Ideal for nocturnal scenes, portraits, reproductions of paintings, lush landscapes, and garish anatomical and botanical studies, the versatile medium later lent itself to color printing and remains in use today.

Burnishing the Night brings together mezzotint prints, books with mezzotint illustrations, and other works on paper from the permanent collection that span the medium’s predominantly Northern European origins through its worldwide use in the 20th century. Several works in the show are by Irish mezzotint engravers, especially Thomas Frye, whose imaginative head studies will also be featured in this spring’s highly anticipated exhibition Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690–1840. Frye’s evocative Young Man with a Candle from 1760 demonstrates the liquid effects made possible by the mezzotint medium, from the bulging, startled eyes to the dancing candlelit shadows and dripping wax. The viewer waits with bated breath along with this startled youth, enjoying the theatrical uncertainty of a ghost story, printed in velvet tones.

Prize Prints celebrates The Queen Sonja Print Award, a biennial prize established to encourage young artists working in the graphic arts. The exhibition features recent work by the 2012 and 2014 prize winners, Tiina Kivinen (Finland) and Svend-Allan Sørensen (Denmark), as well as a selection of works by the prize's founders, printmakers H.M. Queen Sonja of Norway, Kjell Nupen, and Ørnulf Opdahl. The exhibition also recognizes the exciting international collaboration between the print shops Ateljé Larsen (Helsingborg, Sweden) and Universal Limited Art Editions (Long Island, NY).

What role has printmaking had in political activism and revolutionary moments in U.S. history, and how have artists responded to social injustice through poster designs? Favianna Rodriguez, whose prints are featured in the Graduate Center’s James Gallery exhibition Left Coast: California Political Art, will present her work, and archivist and librarian Lincoln Cushing will speak on the history of political prints in California. Their talks will be followed by a discussion moderated by the exhibition’s curator, Nadiah Fellah, James Gallery Mellon Fellow and student in the Graduate Center’s PhD Program in Art History.

The Department of Art History is pleased to announce Experiencing Mass Images, a two-day conference to be held this spring at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

On Thursday, April 16, and Friday, April 17, Drs. Jennifer Roberts, Michael Leja, and Jennifer Greenhill will provide interdisciplinary approaches to investigating the impact of mass images on American experience in recent history (circa 1750-1930). These scholars are interested in how developments in the production, consumption and use of widely reproduced images can indicate social change, resistance, or unrest. Their presentations will coalesce around questions relating to the material dimension of mass images and how viewers cognitively and physically interact with them. Effectively, the speakers will seek to address the phenomenological dimension of popular culture and its literacies.

Day 1 - Thursday, April 16: Michael Leja & Jennifer Greenhill
4:00pm, Northrop Auditorium, Crosby Seminar Room (240)
Michael Leja, Professor of History of Art, University of Pennsylvania
“The Beginnings of Mass Visual Culture in the United States”
Jennifer Greenhill, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“‘Black spots and queer blotches’: Magazine Pictures and the Biodynamic Blur”

Day 2 - Friday, April 17: Jennifer Roberts
12:00 noon, 1030 Heller Hall
Jennifer Roberts, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities, and Chair of the Program in American Studies, Harvard University
“Currency as Metaprinting: the Case of Benjamin Franklin”

For more information, contact the conference organizer, Christina Michelon (miche355@umn.edu) or Madeline Whitman, Outreach Coordinator (whitm160@umn.edu).

This conference will present talks by emerging and established curators and academics who are applying innovative methodologies to the study of printmaking (from ca. 1875 to the present) and connecting it to broader theoretical trends within art history.

For further information, please visit http://rethinkingprints.commons.gc.cuny.edu. Inquires can be directed to printconference2014@gmail.com.