Bits of fabric, metal scraps, trash—these are just some of the experimental materials artists have used to make political statements. From sculpture to the graphic arts, a vibrant tradition of found materials, assemblage, and collage exists in Brazil, where artists have deployed these techniques to illuminate economic, racial, and environmental issues. This talk will explore innovative works at the Harvard Art Museums and beyond, followed by a demonstration of how to make a collagraphic print at home using found materials.

This talk is part of a series investigating power dynamics in artworks across the collections. Considering intersections of art and power, our curatorial team discuss how artists engage with social and political crises, use art to upset systems of power, and imagine more equitable futures.

Led by:
Natalia Ángeles Vieyra, Maher Curatorial Fellow of American Art, Division of European and American Art
Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, Stanley H. Durwood Foundation Curatorial Fellow, Division of European and American Art
Francesca Bewer, Research Curator, Conservation and Technical Study Programs, Director of Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art

This free talk will take place online via Zoom. Pre-registration is not required. Please visit the 'External Link' below to join.

Join Cheryl Hartup, Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American and Caribbean Art at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and University of Oregon student Wendy Echeverría García for a virtual presentation on the exhibition Nuestra imagen actual | Our Present Image: Mexico and the Graphic Arts 1929-1956. Curated by Hartup with the assistance Mary Weaver Chapin, Curator of Prints and Drawings at PAM, the exhibition aims to deepen and broaden the understanding and appreciation of the graphic art of post-revolutionary Mexico, a landmark in the history of twentieth-century printmaking and modern art.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to register for this free event.

In 1934, New York art dealer and publicist, Reeves Lewenthal, hatched a plan to form the Associated American Artists (AAA). The mission of the enterprise was to make accessible, affordable and attractive to America. Lewenthal met with several American artists in Thomas Hart Benton’s New York studio. The group of talented, well-known artists were offered a flat artist fee of $200 to create original print stones and plates. From these the company produced limited edition etchings and lithographic prints. At the onset of AAA, these original impressions were available for five dollars each, and they were initially sold in department stores and later through mail order. Budding collectors sprung up across America and some of these collectors lived in and near Springfield, Ohio—resulting in this collection of limited series prints.

To commemorate the tricentennial of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s birth on October 4, 1720, the Digital Piranesi at the University of South Carolina is hosting a virtual lecture series in Fall 2020.

Carolyn Yerkes, Professor, Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, will present "The Complete Piranesi" on Thursday, November 12 at 2pm (EST). This lecture is free and open to the UofSC community and public. RSVP to jbritton@mailbox.sc.edu to get the Zoom link.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to view the flyer for the full lecture series "Piranesi Turns 300".

The McNay has one of the finest collections of Mexican modernism to be found anywhere. The collection goes back to the late 1920s when founder Marion Koogler McNay purchased Diego Rivera’s Delfina Flores. The Museum’s commitment to Mexican art continued under the leadership of first director John Palmer Leeper who had a great love of and appreciation for Mexican art, culture, and people. Leeper acquired a highly important group of prints produced at the collaborative print workshop, El Taller de Gráfica Popular. The collection, however, remained weak in the prints of the three greats of Mexican modernism: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco. In 2000, the McNay acquired the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s duplicates of prints by these masters creating one of the richest collections of Mexican prints from the 1920s to the 1950s. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to see nearly all of the McNay’s prints by “los tres grandes.”

Living in America: An Exhibition in Four Acts is an online and in-person exhibition curated by Assembly Room that will unfold over the course of the fall season. Organized into four thematic “acts”—Outrage, Love, Hope, and Care—Living in America explores the transformative power of art in times of crises.

Featuring artists Mildred Beltré, Vanessa German, Mark Thomas Gibson, Elektra KB, Yashua Klos, Narsiso Martinez, Azikiwe Mohammed, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Africanus Okokon, Karen J. Revis, Swoon, William Villalongo, and Dáreece J. Walker. Living in America presents a wide range of practices and spotlights the relevance and adaptability of print formats during political upheaval and resistance. Works include conventional printmaking, mixed media incorporating found printed matter, and those informed by reproduction and dissemination. New work is shown here for the first time by Elektra KB, Yashua Klos, Azikiwe Mohammed, and Africanus Okokon, as well as a site-specific stencil installation by Nontsikelelo Mutiti.

“These artists bear witness, through their work, to transformation—cultural, material, and aesthetic—and actively engage each other and their local communities as collaborators and subjects,” says Assembly Room. “As the public struggles to renew America, artists are paving the way and showing us how to channel our outrage, inspire love, live in hope, and act with care.”

Act I: Outrage presents artists channeling rage, pain, and despair into their work; Act II: Love explores love as a radical approach to building a more inclusive society; Act III: Hope illuminates forgotten histories and imagines new futures; and Act IV: Care considers artistic practices that center care as acts of self-preservation and political action. In IPCNY’s Chelsea exhibition space, Acts I and II will open to the public on September 30. After a brief “Intermission,” the gallery will open a new installation comprising Acts III and IV on November 11.

Intertwining floral shapes and austere geometric elements, contrasting colors, and clear, yet playful, typography – Art Déco graphic design brings together elements that seem antagonistic. Elaborate posters, illustrations and advertisements reflect the major themes of the period. New forms of advertising for haute couture, jazz, dance, or for technological achievements, but also for government bonds and war bonds, project an illusory image of a better, more beautiful world.

The exhibition with more than 100 fascinating prints, some of them large-scale works, from the collection of the Hamburg Museum of Applied Art will take visitors on a journey to the glamorous Paris of 100 years ago.

In the 1920s, graphic design saw its heyday worldwide – Bauhaus in Germany, de Stijl in the Netherlands and Russian avant-garde. In France, graphic design was also in its prime. This development, initially drawing on the Art Nouveau movement of the turn of the century and finally being allocated its stylistic designation on the occasion of the Paris World Fair of Applied Art in 1925, was nothing short of a documentation of the life on the edge during the inter-war years.

In boldly designed visions of flamboyance, Paris presented itself as a colorful, progressive and exuberant place. Leading Paris print makers illustrated the attitude towards life during the ›années folles‹, the ›Roaring Twenties‹, with artistic experiments, innovative techniques and spectacular pictorial inventions.

The pochoir print is a characteristic feature of those times – an elaborate printing technique using stencils, often combined with lithography, line engraving and quite a lot of manual work. The naked eye often finds it difficult to distinguish these extensive prints from water colors. Pochoir came to epitomize the genre of elegant fashion illustrations in magazines and journals. A number of outstanding artists – above all Paul Iribe (1883–1935), George Barbier (1882–1932) and André Édouard Marty (1882–1974) – chose this technique as their medium.

Among the leading poster artists – posters were designed in oil or gouache in the studio and then printed as traditional lithographs – were A. M. Cassandre (1901–1968) and Paul Colin (1892–1985). Each had their individual, unmistakable style. While Cassandre was above all active in designing advertisements for luxury goods, Colin specialized in work for the theatres and cabarets in Paris and portrayed the famous singers and actors of that time.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is Colin’s portfolio of the Revue Nègre, Josephine Baker’s troupe of dancers, who had several performances in Paris and for whom Colin also designed the stage set and the costumes