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.

Organized by the Munch, Modernism, and Modernity Research Group at the University of Oslo,
the Munch Museum, and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo.

Venue: National Museum, Oslo, Norway;

November 13, 2015.

This conference examines the relationship among artist, action, surface, and reception within the
modernist tradition. Technical, critical, formal, and historiographic analyses of the notion of the
pictorial surface, and what can be “implanted” and “read,” will be considered. The “Surface,” which
connotes everything from Clement Greenberg’s “material plane” to the site of performance,

simulation, commodity, and materiality, is contested within, and central to, theories of modernism.

What lies behind the surface? How do surface/form and meaning/motif interrelate? How does art
history as a discipline intersect with conservation, and material history to re-imagine the surface?

How have media and screen cultures, and recent theories of visuality and cognition, reconstituted the surface? The conference is organized into three broad conversations: Vision, Touch, and Materials.

Papers are invited from art historians, philosophers, conservators, material historians, film and media theorists, neuroscientists, literary theorists, and others who consider the meaning and dynamics of the pictorial surface in modernism, and who are interested in the surface as a discursive arena.

Proposals for this conference must include (in English)
a) an abstract of maximum 300 words summarizing your argument;
b) your academic resume; and
c) your full contact information including email.

Papers will be 20 minutes in length and will be followed by discussion.

Contributions should be sent to elsebet.kjerschow@nasjonalmuseet.no
by 1st May 2015. You will be notified by 1st June 2015 of your acceptance.

From current historical work on material and visual cultures, to anthropological research on the social life of things and new approaches to seeing and reading in historical scholarship, the study of the physical evidence of culture has become a pressing issue. This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together conservators, curators, and scholars of art history, literary studies, book history and bibliography to reflect on the historical relation between materials, objects, and practices and different forms of visual and textual production in nineteenth-century America.

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PROGRAMS OF SESSIONS:

Thursday April 9 Rare Book and Manuscript Library

(Butler Library, Room 523)

12:30 pm: Welcome and introductory remarks

12:45-2:30 pm: Session 1. Inter-Media Translations

Christopher Lukasik (Purdue University), “The Image in the Text”
Margit Peterfy (University of Heidelberg) “The Author’s Carnival”
Jennifer Greenhill (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), “An undictionarial reading of Mark Twain’s materialities”
Paul Edwards (University of Paris Diderot), “A Persistent Novelty: The Multiple Origins of the American Literary Photobook”
Chair: Marie-Stephanie Delamaire (Columbia University)

2:45-4:15pm: Session 2. Industrialization of Texts and Images

Michael Leja (University of Pennsylvania): “Almanacs and the ‘Image Campaign' of 1840”
Todd Pattison (Northeast Document Conservation Center), “Outside Information: Nineteenth-Century Bookbinding Mistakes”
David Jaffee (Bard Graduate Center), “New York and the Culture of Capital in the Nineteenth Century”
Chair: Paul Erickson (American Antiquarian Society)

4:15 pm-5:00 pm: Coffee
Rare Book and Manuscript Library Hands-on Session

5:00pm Keynote

Jennifer Roberts (Harvard University) “Wood-Work”

6:15pm: Reception (Judith Lee Stronach Center, Department of Art History and Archaeology. Schermerhorn Hall, 8th Floor)

Friday April 10 Department of Art History and Archaeology

Schermerhorn Hal