In 1997, Margaret Rose Vendryes published an essay, “Hanging on Their Walls: An Art Commentary on Lynching, The Forgotten 1935 Exhibition,” in the anthology Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century. That “new” century is now a generation old. Recent protests demanding an end to violence against black people, particularly black men, are echoed in the art that populated that brief, and forgotten, 1935 exhibition.

Vendryes revisits her 1997 essay in light of Hale Woodruff’s prints in the Pressing Issues: Printmaking as Social Justice in 1930s United States on view at the Weisman Art Museum, and the sensitivities given to presenting the lynching subject matter. The theme of violence against black people has engaged African American artists since 1935 in myriad, and more caustic, ways than their forefathers who boldly displayed work during the height of Jim Crow segregation in a blatantly political exhibition calling for lawmakers to end lynching.

For more information and to participate in this virtual event, please visit the external link below.

Weisman Art Museum is proud to present Pressing Issues: Printmaking as Social Justice in the 1930s United States, which brings together work by artists who, through their art, produced radical critical commentaries on the social injustices plaguing the country in their time. In the midst of the Great Depression, visual artists in the United States were put to work through the relief efforts of the New Deal not only to provide a living wage but to bolster the spirits of the general public. Many used the opportunity to portray various scenes of everyday life in the United States through images of modern and rural landscapes, leisure activities, and industrial growth, while others directed their viewers’ attention to economic toil and key social issues. Relying primarily on rarely-displayed Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) prints, the exhibition includes approximately 40 works organized into themes of labor unrest (exploitation, economic disparity, and gender inequalities), discrimination and racial violence, and reactions to the rise of fascism. Pressing Issues is an especially timely exhibition that connects this past to the present, as the current political climate in the United States is revisiting similar themes of isolationism and nationalism, populism and fascism, and racial violence.

Join Tandem Press master printers Joe Freye and Jason Ruhl as they discuss working with Suzanne Caporael to publish her fine art prints in their studio. You'll learn about their collaboration over the years, and the steps it takes to create one of Caporael's vivid prints. A new exhibit featuring Caporael's work—Suzanne Caporael: The Nature of Things opens February 23rd at the Chazen.

American artist Suzanne Caporael takes the natural world as an inspiration for her paintings and related prints. Suzanne Caporael: The Nature of Things features nearly seventy artworks spanning three decades drawn from the Chazen Museum’s permanent collection, presented thematically rather than chronologically. Divided into five main sections, this exhibition highlights the inspirations for the artist’s visual explorations: color and chemical structure, flora and fauna, water and ice, the night sky, and perception and memory. While Caporael’s compositions may at first appear abstract, they are in fact steeped in close observation of the artist’s surroundings and motivated by an immense inquisitiveness. “Curiosity,” she has said, “has driven me to become my own teacher and my own student.” At the same time, however, Caporael’s compositions are not literal depictions of her research, but rather traces of her discovery process: she explains that “painting or making a print is something I do with my hands while I’m thinking.”

Caporael often works in series, creating groups of paintings clustered around one topic before moving on to another. She considers her painting and printmaking practices to have something of a sibling relationship. She typically makes prints in the middle of what she calls a “learning project” or painting campaign, when she is not yet finished resolving an image. All the prints included in this exhibition were published by the University of Wisconsin—Madison’s Tandem Press, where Caporael has initiated a transformation, working closely with master printers to translate her compositions from one medium to another. The Chazen Museum of Art serves as the official repository of the Tandem Press archive, from which these prints are drawn.

Please join us for the annual Gillett G. Griffin Memorial Lecture with Raina Lampkins-Fielder, curator of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, as well as a program officer of the Foundation’s parent organization, the Souls Grown Deep Community Partnership, which supports the communities that gave rise to the 160 artists represented in its collection.

For more information and to register for this event, please visit the external link below.

The Kimono in Print: 300 Years of Japanese Design is the first show devoted to examining the kimono as a major source of inspiration and experimentation in Japanese print culture, from the Edo period (1603–1868) to the Meiji period (1868–1912). This dialogue between print and kimono design is illustrated by approximately 70 Japanese prints, as well as a selection of illustrated woodblock printed books and paintings, primarily drawn from the Museum’s 3,000 Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints from John Chandler Bancroft (1835–1901) gifted in 1901. Central to The Kimono in Print is a one-of-a-kind contemporary wedding kimono by Chiso, the important 465-year-old, Kyoto-based kimono house. The Worcester Wedding Kimono is the first ever kimono commissioned as an artwork for an art museum. Celebrating the 120th-anniversary of WAM’s transformative acquisition of the Bancroft collection, the contemporary wedding kimono reflects the Museum’s vision for Japanese art in the 21st century.

Print artists from 17th to 20th -century Japan documented ever-evolving trends in fashion, popularized certain styles of dress, and even designed kimonos. The works begin with early prints from the late 17th century, when a more complex and sophisticated attitude towards clothing first appeared, as seen in the lavish prints of the floating world’s celebrity kabuki actors and courtesans. Modern design books and prints from the early 20th century, inspired by or made for kimono, demonstrate how the boundaries between print and textile fashion and design became more fluid.

The commission of a kimono as an artwork, rather than for a specific client or occasion, gave Chiso and its designer significant creative space to give form to their outlook regarding the present and future art of the kimono. Inspired by the New England foliage and Worcester’s famed seven hills, Chiso’s Senior Designer Mr. Imai Atsuhiro incorporated the iconic maple leaf throughout the kimono design, as well as seven textile techniques, ranging from newly developed to endangered ones. Documentary photographs of the process, as well as a video demonstrating many of Chiso’s signature techniques, are included in the exhibition. The Worcester Wedding Kimono reveals in stunning detail Chiso’s continuing commitment and aspiration to Japanese beauty and steadfast dedication to innovation, design, and creativity—in the present and for the future.

Since 1910, Grafiska Sällskapet (the Swedish Printmakers Association) in Stockholm has provided opportunities, information, resources, and mutual support to its members. The association now boasts a membership of more than 400 active printmakers in Sweden and abroad. This exhibition, compiled by association chairperson Anne-Lie Larsson Ljung, board member Bo Ganarp, and association member Maria Eriksson will feature 40+ exciting examples of contemporary Swedish prints that utilize printmaking techniques in traditional and inventive ways. The exhibition wonderfully represents the visual diversity of the printmakers of Grafiska Sällskapet and is positively a must-see.

Please join Highpoint for a discussion (via Zoom) with the curators of Grafiska Sällskapet; Contemporary Swedish Printmaking on Thursday, February 25 from 12-1pm CST.

For more information please visit the external link below.

From Creation to Collection: Making and Marketing Drawings in Nineteenth-Century France
The Cleveland Museum of Art, virtual event
Thursday, March 11, 2:00-5:00 PM and Friday, March 12, 2:00-4:00 PM
Free; registration required
https://www.clevelandart.org/events/virtual-events/creation-collection-making-and-marketing-drawings-nineteenth-century-france

In anticipation of a major exhibition and publication focused on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s holdings of 19th-century French drawings in 2023, scholars present new research related to the materials, function, and collecting of drawings during this period. This is a two day event.

Opening Remarks [2:00 - 2:10 PM]
William Griswold, Director, Cleveland Museum of Art

Britany Salsbury, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Cleveland Museum of Art

The Materials and Techniques of 19th-Century French Drawings I [2:30 – 3:30 PM]
“Drawing without a Master”: Visual Memory Training and the Politics of Skilled Labor in Nineteenth-Century France
Shana Cooperstein, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Art and Design, Community College of Philadelphia

Learning to Draw Landscape
Patricia Mainardi, Professor Emeritus, Doctoral Program in Art History, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Delacroix’s Drawings for Prints on Tracing Paper and Wood
Ashley Dunn, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Degas’s Alchemy
Michelle Foa, Associate Professor of European Art, Tulane University

The Materials and Techniques of 19th-Century French Drawings II [3:30 - 5:00 PM]
Unintended Outcomes: Recognizing Change in Late 19th Century Drawings
Harriet Stratis, Independent Research Conservator

Material as Meaning: Time and Technique in Cézanne’s Drawings
Samantha Friedman, Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art and Laura Neufeld, Associate Paper Conservator, The David Booth Conservation Department, The Museum of Modern Art

Negotiating Privacy and the Art Market: Thinking about the Public Exposure of Toulouse-Lautrec's Private Drawings
Alexandra Courtois de Vicose, Visiting Professor of Art History, Kenyon College

Symbolist Drawing: The Lure of the Particulate
Jay A. Clarke, Rothman Family Curator of Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago

Friday, March 12, 2021

Opening Remarks [2:00 - 2:10 PM]
Heather Lemonedes Brown, Virginia N. and Randall J. Barbato Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Cleveland Museum of Art

Britany Salsbury, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Cleveland Museum of Art

Collecting 19th-Century French Drawings: Exhibitions, Institutions, and the Market [2:10 - 3:30 PM]
The First Retrospective Exhibition of the Drawings of J.-A.-D. Ingres (1861)
Andrew Carrington Shelton, Professor of History of Art, The Ohio State University

Private Lines: Collecting and Displaying Studio Drawings in the École des Beaux-Arts in the 19th Century
Anne-Cécile Moheng, Curatorial Fellow, Drawings Collection, Beaux-Arts de Paris

Private Collecting for Public Institutions: 19th-Century French Drawings in Early 20th-Century Cleveland
Britany Salsbury, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Cleveland Museum of Art

The Elusive Mr. Richard Owen: A Dealers Rise and Fall from Grace in the American Art Market
Danielle Hampton Cullen, Research Assistant, European Paintings Department, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Discussion [3:30 - 4:00 PM]

Join the Smithsonian American Art Museum for a five-part online conversation series that examines Chicanx graphics and how artists have used printmaking as a vehicle to debate larger social causes, reflect on issues of their time, and build community. Hear from artists, scholars, and activists about the Chicanx graphics movement, from civil rights–era prints to today’s digital landscape. This series emphasizes cross-generational mentorships and an expanded view of American art and the history of graphic arts, featuring women, Afro Latinx, LGBTQ+, and other previously marginalized voices.

This conversation series features live Q&A sessions and is presented in conjunction with the landmark exhibition ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now.

Since its founding, the Brandywine Workshop has served as an epicenter for multiethnic artists to exchange a wide variety of thought and concepts through the collaborative process of printmaking. Working together with master printers, artists have pushed the boundaries of the creative process and embraced the possibilities of printmaking. Allan L. Edmunds, Brandywine’s founder and recently retired director, emphasizes the importance of collaboration and the “multiple forces and circumstances that allow art-making to thrive at a particular time and in a particular place.”

Roll, Press, Pull: Contemporary Prints from the Brandywine Workshop & Archives will present the forces of time and place as a unifying component within the artwork of this collection. This important gift provides PAFA the unique opportunity to examine the impact of Philadelphia and Brandywine Workshop on a range of diverse forms, images, and stylistic approaches that artists examined within the span of four decades into the present.