Originally a painter trained in oil, Hagiwara Hideo (1913–2007) became ill with tuberculosis and turned to printmaking in 1954. From the start his prints were of an abstract nature, and for 50 years he was a constant innovator in his choice of motifs, style, and technique. This first major U.S. retrospective exhibition of Hagiwara’s work showcases his enormous versatility. More than 30 prints span his early work of the 1950s to the Greek Mythology series in 1965, and from his celebrated series of novel views of Mount Fuji in the 1980s and 1990s to his enormously laborious prints of the Face, Memory, and Mandala series.

This exhibition will be presented in two rotations: Rotation 1: December 14, 2019 – June 21, 2020. Rotation 2: June 27, 2020 – December 6, 2020.

In the Making: The Mount Holyoke College Printmaking Workshop celebrates the work of artists and printers who participated in the College’s Printmaking Workshop between 1984 and 2012. Through the display of preparatory drawings, proofs, and archival images, alongside the stunning prints themselves, the exhibition illuminates the creative modalities underlying each artist’s approach to the medium.

Established in 1984, The Mount Holyoke College Printmaking Workshop was an artist-in-residency conceived and run by Nancy Campbell, a printmaker and professor of studio art at Mount Holyoke College. For nearly thirty years, Campbell invited one leading woman artist and one master printer to create limited-edition works and give a public lecture on campus.

Artists such as Elaine de Kooning, Kiki Smith, and Faith Ringgold, and printers Norman Stewart and Carol Weaver spent several days producing work in the College’s printmaking studio, giving students and faculty an opportunity to participate in the printmaking process.

This exhibition centers on one of the formative collections of the Mead Art Museum: the gift of more than 2,000 prints to the museum by Edward C. Crossett (Class of 1905) in 1951. Spanning a wide chronology and a range of printmaking techniques, Crossett’s vast collection includes works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Francisco Goya, as well as Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and numerous others. The Best Impressions highlights the breadth of the collection and the ways in which it can be used to explore topics such as the history of art, the development of printmaking, and the rise of a modern art market.

Presented in complement to Designing the New, the display on the fourth floor of the Centre St. building will present "From Mucha to Morris: Books of the Art Nouveau", a selection of 12 Art Nouveau books by William Morris, Alphonse Mucha, and others. These stunning books exemplify the romance and whimsy of the era, with pages inhabited by undulated vines, gardens of abstract flowers, and elegant maidens in billowing gowns. In the 1890s, the height of the Art Nouveau movement, Henry Walters began building his book collection in earnest. While he is best known today for collecting medieval manuscripts, Henry Walters had a taste for equally magnificent printed books and frequently sought out collectible editions with extra illustrations and one-of-a-kind touches by the artists who designed them. Among those collectible editions is a unique edition of Ilsée, Princesse de Tripoli, featuring original watercolor illustrations from Mucha, and a one-of-a-kind binding commissioned by Henry Walters. A first edition of William Morris’ Kelmscott Chaucer, as well as works by renowned illustrators Aubrey Beardsley and Walter Crane, will also be on display in the rotation. In the years since his death, the Walters collection of Art Nouveau books has continued to grow, most notably through a generous gift from local collector and philanthropist Hugo Dalsheimer, several of whose books will be on display.

From Mucha to Morris draws from the Walters own collection of rare books and manuscripts, which spans more than 1000 years and contains over 900 manuscripts, 1300 of the earliest printed books, and 2000 rare later editions from across the globe.

Known for his nudes and interiors, Pierre Bonnard spent his early years walking the streets of Paris, sketch pad in hand, capturing the bustling pace and energy of the city. He later referred to this subject as "the theater of the everyday," an approach to art-making that revels in the crowd and the spontaneous encounter. This lecture considers Bonnard’s early prints and paintings in light of the passive, quick-moving observation that generated them, highlighting their unique perspectives, empathy and humor.

Free with museum admission.

The artistic poster first flourished in the United States in the 1890s. Initially following design trends pioneered in Europe, American artists soon created their own unique style. Magazines were among the first to adopt this new form of advertising, employing outstanding designers such as Will Bradley, Edward Penfield, and Maxfield Parrish to advertise periodicals including Harper’s, Lippincott’s, and The Century. The posters were produced using color lithography, allowing artists to create powerful designs with bold color that married original art with advertising. Posters were placed in bookshops and on newsstands to entice readers to purchase books and magazines, but soon the artistic posters became more popular than the work they advertised. A brief but intense period of “poster mania” swept the country before dying out just as quickly. This exhibition features original posters, magazine covers, and book covers from this exciting chapter of design, artistic, and literary history.

The exhibition is largely drawn from the collection of Daniel Bergsvik and Donald Hastler, who have promised their distinguished collection of American and international posters to the Portland Art Museum.

Käthe Kollwitz was a political artist, at least in the sense that she wanted to have an impact on viewers. But how do her images deliver messages without words? This lecture examines the unique strategy of pictorial communication that Kollwitz developed over seven years while producing her series Peasants' War (1901–1908).

Annette Seeler is an independent scholar and former curator of the Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum in Berlin. She contributes to projects at a variety of cultural institutions, including the Getty Research Institute, the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the National Gallery of Ireland, and the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg. She has published numerous essays and books on 20th century art, focusing on the work of Käthe Kollwitz, including the catalogue raisonné of the artist's sculpture.

This lecture complements the exhibition Käthe Kollwitz: Prints, Process, Politics, on view at the Getty Research Institute from December 3, 2019, through March 29, 2020.

Free, advance tickets required. Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information.

This exhibition brings together etchings and drawings by the German surrealist Unica Zürn (1916-1970). Perhaps better known for her writings and her photographic collaborations with Hans Bellmer, Zürn was an accomplished visual artist in her own right. She created automatic drawings, paintings, and sculptures which were exhibited in four solo shows and alongside her better-known male counterparts in the 1959 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme. Her success was hindered, however, by the male-dominated surrealist world in Paris and the shadow cast by a lifelong struggle with mental illness.

The etchings in this exhibition were made after a series of drawings, Orakel und Spektakle, created by Zürn during a 1960 hospitalization caused by a schizophrenic episode. Zürn populated these immersive scenes with transformative creatures rendered in the delicate, linear style that became her hallmark. Gazing at each other and out toward the viewer, these hybrid beings float in a limitless space, devoid of foreground or background. The dreamlike quality of her visual art also emerges as a pervasive theme in her writings. In the semi-autobiographical Dark Spring, for example, the protagonist endures life only through the refuge of her fantasies, where she feels safety and power as well as terror, the feeling she treasures most of all.

A selection of Zürn’s drawings appear alongside the Orakel und Spektakle etchings, including a work from Hexentexte (Witch’s Text), an unpublished 1954 illustrated manuscript comprised of five drawings accompanied by anagrammatic poems.

When Jasper Johns’s paintings of flags and targets debuted in 1958, they brought him instant acclaim and established him as a critical link between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. In the ensuing 60 years, Johns (US, b. 1930) has continued to astonish viewers with the beauty and complexity of his paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints. Today, he is considered one of the 20th century’s greatest American artists.

In celebration of the artist’s 90th birthday, An Art of Changes surveys six decades of Johns’s practice in printmaking, highlighting his experiments with familiar, abstract, and personal imagery that play with memory and visual perception in endlessly original ways. The exhibition features some 90 works in intaglio, lithography, woodcut, linoleum cut, screenprinting, and lead relief—all drawn from the Walker’s comprehensive collection of the artist’s prints.

Organized in four thematic sections, the exhibition follows Johns through the years as he revises and recycles key motifs over time, including the American flag, numerals, and the English alphabet, which he describes as “things the mind already knows.” Some works explore artists’ tools, materials, and techniques. Others explore signature aspects of the artist’s distinctive mark-making, including flagstones and hatch marks, while later pieces teem with autobiographical imagery. To underscore Johns’s fascination with the changes that occur when an image is reworked in another medium, the prints will be augmented by a small selection of paintings and sculptures.

Andreas Marks, head of the Japanese and Korean art department at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, will discuss the artists and stories behind shin hanga, “the new print.” This art movement developed in the first half of the twentieth century in an effort to revive the great Japanese tradition of woodblock prints (known as ukiyo-e) and simultaneously capture the dynamic, modern life of Japan.

Exhibition galleries for "Seven Masters: 20th-Century Japanese Woodblock Prints" open for a public preview at 5 pm.

The lecture, “Changed Times: Sources & Methods behind 20th-Century Japanese Woodblock Prints,” begins at 7 pm in the UMFA’s Katherine W. and Ezekiel R. Dumke Jr. Auditorium.