The first works of Japanese art to enter the collection of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art—which eventually became LACMA in April 1965—were a large group of woodblock prints acquired in 1916, three years after the museum opened. Today, the museum’s permanent collection of Japanese art reflects the interests of a group of individuals in Southern California who came to appreciate Japanese art and culture over the course of the 20th century, particularly in the post-WWII decades.

As part of LACMA’s commitment to Japanese art, the museum made significant artwork purchases in addition to acquiring large gifts of inrō, traditional and contemporary prints, ceramics, and netsuke. Moreover, in the 1980s the museum constructed a building exclusively for the display of Japanese art, and in the early 90s a separate department for Japanese art was established.

Japanese Paintings and Prints: Celebrating LACMA’s 50th Anniversary commemorates the museum’s 50th year as well as the individuals and groups who have shaped the museum’s collections of Japanese paintings and prints. Included are gifts from private collectors, works purchased through the generosity of individual donors, and objects acquired through the support of various museum groups.

After seeing Theodore Roussel’s watercolor The Thames Embankment, Chelsea at a London gallery in 1885, the already well-established James McNeill Whistler requested an introduction to the younger artist. Their meeting sparked more than a decade of professional collaboration that included side-by-side working sessions and camaraderie in both public and private settings. As a result of this communal creativity, Whistler, Roussel, and their artistic circle made remarkable technical and aesthetic developments in lithography and color etching. This exhibition—built around the Art Institute’s exceptional holdings of works on paper by Whistler and a recent major gift of works by Roussel—offers a new perspective on this artistic network and the resulting innovation through 175 objects, including etchings, lithographs, drawings, paintings, and artist-designed frames.

Displayed throughout the Jean and Steven Goldman Prints and Drawings Galleries in the Richard and Mary L. Gray Wing, the exhibition demonstrates the creative impact of the group’s shared network of models, studio assistants, poets, and critics. Related works by various members of this network—from the museum’s permanent collection as well as private collections and the Terra Foundation for American Art—are enhanced and given context by the inclusion of correspondence, historical ephemera, and surviving etching plates, presenting a full picture of the creative exchange and invention that characterized this 19th-century artistic community.

Accompanying the exhibition is an interactive digital component, available both in the galleries and also on the Art Institute’s website, which gives visitors the opportunity to explore the extent of interconnection among the members of Whistler and Roussel’s network. Each artist is represented by a portrait image, a brief biography, and a list of related works, while different layers of the interface illustrate how various members of the network were connected through professional, familial, or other social relationships. A digital publication—aimed at Whistler enthusiasts, students of 19th-century art, and those more broadly interested in the history of artistic collaboration—provides additional insight into the exhibition.

This innovative collaboration between the Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art and the Department of Prints and Drawings examines Renaissance and Baroque printmakers’ direct responses to Classical antiquity through the figure of Dionysos, the ancient Greek god of wine and theater. Installed in the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, this exhibition juxtaposes ancient sculpture with prints from the 15th through the 18th century with nearly 100 objects—pieces from the permanent collection, new loans of ancient art, and recently acquired works on paper.

Dionysos—known as Bacchus to the Romans—cavorted with an entourage of satyrs, the god Pan, and frenzied maenads, female followers of the god. All these devotees represented the untamed and hedonistic desires of humanity, which were unleashed by the intoxicating elixir of wine. Because performance was a part of the early Greek festivals of Dionysos, he also became known as the patron god of theater, an aspect of the deity that is less well known today. In ancient art, Dionysos could take many forms, from a graceful youth to a bearded mature man. During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the time of early printmaking, interest in antiquity—especially Dionysos—flourished. Ancient sculptures depicting the god and his raucous retinue inspired artists to find new ways to transform age-old Dionysian subjects into prints and drawings that would appeal to their own contemporary audiences.

Anchoring the exhibition are Greek and Roman sculptures depicting Dionysos and his wild followers along with vessels used in ritual drinking parties and festivals honoring the god of wine and theater. Their printed counterparts are masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance to the French Rococo, including notably Andrea Mantegna’s Bacchanal with a Wine Vat, a 15th-century Italian engraving with striking visual similarity to the bronze Statue of Young Dionysos (a current long-term loan to the museum). Bringing together this rich selection of works, separated by as many as 1,500 years, this exhibition offers new, enticing insights into the art of Classical antiquity and its later revivals.

This exhibition-the first at the Gallery dedicated to James Abbott McNeill Whistler-examines one of the most celebrated artists of the 19th century through the lens of three of his earliest and most innovative sets of etchings, the so-called French, Thames, and Venice Sets. Each set is representative of an important period in Whistler’s life: as a student in Paris, absorbing the lessons of his Realist contemporaries and the Old Masters; as an emerging artist in London, forging a name for himself as an etcher; and as a well-known artist and teacher in Venice.

Pace Prints is pleased to present an exhibition of new editions and a sculptural work by Tara Donovan at its 32 East 57th Street gallery. The exhibition will run May 9—June 27, concurrent with Tara Donovan at Pace Gallery’s 57th Street location, with a joint opening reception for both exhibitions Friday, May 8, 6-8pm.

The exhibition unveils a new series of prints, created in tandem with the artist’s ongoing investigation of Slinkys® as a sculptural material. In an iteration of this exploration of form, the Slinkys® are deconstructed and refashioned to project two-dimensionally along the flat surface of a wall, forming meandering and layered patterns that expand or contract depending on the given spatial conditions.

Using the same method of construction, unique printmaking matrices of Slinkys® are produced and inked using an airbrush. An edition of large-scale, black and white relief prints are made from each matrix.

International Print Center New York presents New Prints 2015/Summer, on view at 508 West 26th St, 5th Floor, from June 11 – July 31, 2015. The exhibition consists of forty-six prints by thirty-nine artists, selected from over 2,000 submissions. Showing during IPCNY’s 15th Anniversary year, New Prints 2015/Summer is the fifty-first presentation of IPCNY’s New Prints Program, a series of juried exhibitions organized by IPCNY several times each year featuring prints made within the past twelve months. An illustrated brochure with a curatorial essay by Tom Freudenheim accompanies the exhibition.


Artists are: Golnar Adili, Mark Barry, Kristian Battell, Mildred Beltre, Anders Bergstrom, Nicholas Brown, Douglas Collins, Tobias Crone, Jeffrey Dell, DETEXT, Shabnam K. Ghazi, Lari R. Gibbons, Sadko Hadzihasanovic, Tenisha Artes Hicks, Traci Horgen, Travis Janssen, Louis Joseph, Jimin Lee, Julia Ludwig, Eimearjean McCormack, Jonathan D. Metzger, Jill Parisi, Ross Racine, Mark Rice, Elin Rødseth, Julia Samuels, Tatiana Simonova, Brian Spolans, Jelena Sredanović, Dan Steeves, Deborra Stewart-Pettengill, Valerie Syposz, Marjorie Tomchuk, Carol Wax, Andy Wentz, Jenifer Wightman, John Willis, Ken Wood, and Liz Zanis.

The Art Complex Museum (ACM) has a rich, comprehensive print collection. The collection formed by Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser encompasses seventeenth century Dutch etchings and engravings, including Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross by Torchlight, as well as modern Japanese, American and European nineteenth and twentieth century etchings, engravings, woodcuts, wood engravings, lithographs, and drypoint; and contemporary prints in a variety of techniques purchased by the Boston Printmakers for the museum collection. The Boston Printmakers and Art Complex Museum have collaborated on dozens of projects since the 1970s. The initial relationship was through Ture Bengtz, who was a founder of The Boston Printmakers in 1947 and the first director of the Art Complex Museum.

We are delighted to work exclusively with ACM on this regenerative exhibition showcasing the astute talent, tradition and innovation among our members. For this collaborative exhibition, ACM’s contemporary curator Craig Bloodgood and collections manager Maureen Wengler have selected 42 works for response pieces to be created by members of The Boston Printmakers.

Under the longest reigning king in French history, Paris became the most important print producer in Europe, a position it maintained until the end of the 19th century. This extraordinary development was fueled by official policies that aimed to elevate the entire spectrum of the fine and decorative arts. Prints were at once a means of communication, a propaganda tool, and an art form in ever-increasing demand. Printmakers and print publishers produced hundreds of thousands of works on paper in a century that was as hungry for imagery as ours is today.

Propaganda was an essential characteristic of print production. But propaganda refers to more than images of the king’s likeness, victories, virtues, and royal festivals, which were most effectively disseminated through etchings and engravings. It also refers to a broader strategy promoted by the king himself: France would be a model for the rest of Europe. With the help of prints, allies and enemies alike would bear witness to the unmatched refinement of French technical skill, aesthetics, and taste. On the tercentenary of the death of Louis XIV, this exhibition demonstrates the significance of an art that attained unparalleled sophistication and influence.

This exhibition was organized by the Getty Research Institute in special collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent is the first full-scale exhibition to survey the entire career of pioneering artist and designer Corita Kent (1918–1986). For over three decades, Corita experimented in printmaking, producing a groundbreaking body of work that combines faith, activism, and teaching with messages of acceptance and hope. A Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Corita taught in the art department at Immaculate Heart College (IHC) in Los Angeles from 1947 through 1968. At IHC, she developed her vibrant, Pop-inspired prints from the 1960s, mining a variety of secular and religious sources and using the populist printmaking medium to pose philosophical questions about racism, war, poverty, and religion. Her work was widely recognized for its revolutionary impact and remains an iconic symbol of that period in American history. As a teacher, Corita inspired her students to discover new ways of experiencing the world by seeking out revelation in everyday events. Bringing together artwork from Corita’s entire career, this exhibition reveals the impassioned energy of this artist, educator, and activist.

From the international fight against fascism to protecting the proletariat, El Taller de Gráfica Popular (the Workshop for Popular Graphics, or TGP for short) worked diligently to keep pertinent issues before the populace of Mexico and the world. Covering the period from the TGP’s predecessor, the LEAR (the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists), through the most active years of the workshop, the exhibition of approximately 250 works presents an extensive collection of large-scale posters (carteles), small flyers (volantes), books and pamphlets, powerful fine art portfolios and calavera newspapers that exemplifies TGP’s lasting contributions to the Mexican printmaking tradition. The TGP used art to inspire and inform in a country where literacy and communication technology were not widespread. Images of revolution, resistance and unity were often paired with anti-Nazi and anti-fascist messages and printed on the economical, easily distributed volantes and the larger, more visible carteles.

Remarkably prolific, the TGP produced works in a wide variety of media, specializing in linoleum prints and woodcuts. From Raúl Anguiano to Alfredo Zalce, workshop membership included many notable 20th-century Mexican printmakers. The workshop also instructed students from other countries in the techniques of printing and printmaking. During the New Deal era in the United States, some Works Progress Administration artists collaborated on projects with the TGP. Several years later, during the U.S. civil rights movement, Chicano and African American artists such as Elizabeth Catlett would produce work there as well. The proliferation of television and radio in Mexican homes, along with a more stable political environment, eventually made the use of carteles and volantes for disseminating information unnecessary, and the workshop’s productivity slowed. The TGP will always be remembered, however, as a distinct part of Mexican history, when art put social and political issues before the people and brought them to life. The accompanying catalogue, which will contain extensive scholarship and images, will be one of the very first authoritative texts in English on the workshop.