The art of ukiyo-e flourished in Japan during the Edo period (1615-1867), an interval characterized by the introduction and marked growth of a literate and sophisticated merchant class in the country's urban centers, particularly in the city of Edo, modern Tokyo. Barred from foreign travel by the ruling shoguns, members of this group focused their attention on local amusements, frequenting the theater, visiting brothels, and adopting the most recent fads. This life of contemporary pleasure came to be known as ukiyo, or the "floating world," as though one might drift through life in a manner of a leaf floating downstream. Artists of the period turned increasingly toward the representation of this new subject matter. Specializing in genre scenes, portraits of actors and courtesans, and later, landscape, in a manner that reflected the most contemporary fashions and attitudes, their work became known as ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world."

Join distinguished Art Historians Joe Siry, Professor of Art History; Larry Silver, Professor of Art History emeritus at the University of Pennslyvania; and Miya Tokumitsu, Curator of the Davison Art Center, for a virtual weseminar as they discuss some special objects in the Davison Art Center.

The Davison Art Center is the home of Wesleyan’s art collection, which is focused primarily on graphic art and photography. The breadth of the collection is equaled by its outstanding quality; exceptionally fine impressions by Rembrandt van Rijn and Francisco de Goya, rare early engravings, and important contemporary artwork by artists including Kara Walker and Jasper Johns are only a few highlights. The Davison Art Center supports teaching, learning, and research in its study room, and presents public exhibitions in its gallery. We hope you can join us to learn more!

Event details
Thursday, September 23, 2021
12:00- 1:00 p.m.

Please register by Tuesday, September 21. Registrants will then receive a follow-up email on Wednesday, September 22 with details on how to join the program. This is a webinar-style Zoom gathering. If you are not able to join by video, you may dial-in.

For more information and to register please visit the external link below.

The Asociacion de Gradadores de Cuba (Association of Recorders of Cuba or AGC) was a collective of Master printmakers residing in La Habana (Havana) consisting of Founding Members: Carmelo Gonzalez, Armando Posse, Luis Penalver, Armando Fernandez, Ana Rosa Gutierrez, Jose Lopez, Angel Marti Denis, Eugenio Rodriquez, Rolando Santana, Israel Cordova, and Holbein Lopez.

These works of art were created between 1949 to 1968 (pre, during, and post Cuban Revolution) as a means to share cultural, political, social, spiritual, and artistic perspectives with the people (domestic & internationally). This exhibition examines various printmaking techniques by Founding Members and other AGC members.

Some works exhibited are also permanently exhibited at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba (National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba). Lastly, some works were produced at the Taller Experimental de Grafica located in La Habana (Havana), the oldest print workshop in Cuba founded in 1962, which still operates today.

The exhibition is loaned from the Armand-Paul Family Collection.

In the 19th century, Japanese printmaking saw two concurrent trends: an intensification of color and a rise in the popularity of landscape images.

Capitalizing on these two trends were the most successful print designers of their time, Katsushika Hokusai (1760­–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). Their daring color schemes formed fantastic landscapes that fueled worldwide demand for Japanese prints.

Beginning with the widespread use of the chemical pigment Berlin blue in the 1830s, landscapes could be as vibrant as one’s imagination. Brilliant blue waterfalls, jade hills, chartreuse cliffs, and pink skies made up a new palette for the natural world as depicted in print. The popularity of series such as Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji and Hiroshige’s One Hundred Views of Edo did more to spread these images at home, in Europe, and in America than ever before.

This exhibition of works drawn from the Art Institute’s collection showcases a spectacular moment of color in Japanese landscapes—one that would have a lasting impact on artists oceans away.

Nineteen new grants totaling over $1.55 million will support exhibitions, publications and digital projects that center the graphic arts as part of the Getty Foundation’s ongoing Paper Project initiative.

Prints and drawings are an unsung area of curatorial innovation and a place for museums to bring new forms of storytelling to their permanent collections. Launched in 2018, The Paper Project funds professional development and experimental projects for curators around the world who study prints and drawings to make graphic arts collections more accessible and relevant to 21st-century audiences.

“Permanent collections that include prints and drawings are the lifeblood of museums, archives and libraries,” says Heather MacDonald, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation. “As the cultural sector moves into post-pandemic rebuilding, institutions have a tremendous opportunity to refocus on their own holdings while they also invest in the professional growth of their staff. These grants provide the resources needed to take a deep dive into seldom-seen collections and develop creative and relatable ways to display works on paper in galleries, in print and also online.”

The curatorial projects represent collections of prints and drawings created across more than a millennium and dozens of countries. They also demonstrate the wide range of works on paper that exist, including personal travel journals, political posters, illuminated manuscripts, architectural plans and maps, woodcuts, acid-based etchings and more. Participating curators have chosen a variety of in-gallery and digital solutions to present these objects in fresh and compelling ways.

APS-Affiliated Grantees Include:

International Print Center New York - For an exhibition and accompanying publication on Margaret Lowengrund, the first woman in the United States to open her own hybrid printmaking workshop/gallery—The Contemporaries gallery. Project curators: Christina Weyl and Lauren Rosenblum

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) - For an exhibition on two key episodes in 20th-century political printmaking: German Expressionism after World War I and Mexico City’s Taller de Gráfíca Popular. Project curators: Erin Sullivan Maynes and Rachel Kaplan

For more information and the full press release please visit the external link below.

What’s in a word? The twentieth century witnessed a world bombarded with written information on an extraordinary scale. This expansion and complication of human communication inspired some artists to create works that prompt viewers to examine how they interact with the written word. Illegible features prints, drawings, and paintings on paper that incorporate familiar English words that are playfully manipulated away from any expected usage. Others within the exhibition employ imaginary but expressive scripts inspired by non-Western calligraphy. Each encourages guests to consider how images are “read” and how meaning is derived from marks on paper.

For more information please visit the external link below.

Towering skyscrapers, massive steel bridges, and the hubbub of city streets captivated artists working in the first half of the twentieth century. Roaming the rapidly changing urban environment, they explored ways to convey the awe-inspiring scale and speed of the modern American city. For photographers, technological advances such as hand-held cameras and faster film and shutter speeds enabled new visual practices, from off-kilter, oblique views and bird’s and worm’s eye vantage points to the blurred effects of motion. Printmakers likewise experimented with cropped compositions and varying proportions to underscore verticality or broad expanse.

Drawn to the social strata of the metropolis, artists portrayed a wide variety of city-dwellers going about their daily lives. The dynamic geometry of the skyline and vitality of the city offered endless sources of inspiration, from the dramatically cast shadows of cavernous streets, the cadence of drying laundry suspended in rows, and the swirling forms of Coney Island’s amusement rides to the repeating curves of ornamental lampposts and the dazzling lights of the city at night.

For more information please visit the external link below.

The National Gallery of Art Library has a distinctive and respected collection of artists’ books. The Library’s holdings of this expansive format incorporate everything from Ed Ruscha’s seminal black and white photobook 26 Gasoline Stations to Julie Chen’s intricate, multipiece constructions of distinctive color palettes, and a wide variety in between. The familiarity of the book form draws viewers into artists’ books — the intimate, hand-held size of some, the appearance of a narrative in others. In some cases, ordinary structures carry profoundly personal stories. In others, the intricate engineering is the book’s main subject.

Time/Travel is a selection of artists’ books, all by women artists, that explores universal themes through an eclectic selection from the past 50 years.

For more information please visit the external link below.

The Department of Drawings and Prints boasts more than one million drawings, prints, and illustrated books made in Europe and the Americas from around 1400 to the present day. Because of their number and sensitivity to light, the works can only be exhibited for a limited period and are usually housed in on-site storage facilities. To highlight the vast range of works on paper, the department organizes four rotations a year in the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery. Each installation is the product of a collaboration among curators and consists of up to one hundred objects grouped by artist, technique, style, period, or subject.

For centuries, art has played a role in revolutions, protests, and social activist movements. This installation explores how artists from the eighteenth century to the present have mobilized works on paper to promote causes or ideals, record or respond to events, and sway public opinion. The drawings, prints, and posters on view relate to the American, French, Haitian, Mexican, and Russian revolutions, the abolition of slavery, and campaigns for and against the dominant political systems of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As this grouping demonstrates, artists have turned to printmaking, in particular, to call attention to racial, gender, and economic injustices.

For more information please visit the external link below.

Nearly twenty years ago, the Morgan decided to expand its collection of drawings and prints into the modern era. The goal was to assemble works that reflect the changing form, function, and definition of drawing from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present.

Showcasing the continuous vigor of this initiative, this exhibition presents a selection of artworks acquired during the last five years. At its core is an exceptional group of prints by American artist Martin Puryear, created between 2001 and 2014. Exuding the same elegance and refinement as his sculptures, they reveal Puryear’s formal imagination and singular attention to craft.

Other highlights range from a rare 1916 pastel by American modernist Morton Schamberg to a sensuous 2016 watercolor by Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu. The exhibition calls attention to the broad variety of techniques that modern and contemporary artists have embraced. A traditional pencil study by Paula Rego, for instance, is juxtaposed to experimental approaches such as altered inkjet prints by Guillermo Kuitca and a watercolor that Sam Gilliam created by folding and manipulating the sheet.

The large number of works made in the last thirty years attests to the vitality of the medium of drawing today and to the Morgan’s engagement with contemporary art. Most of the works in the exhibition have been acquired as direct gifts or with contributed funds. This presentation is a tribute to the extraordinary generosity of our donors and benefactors.

For more information please visit the external link below.