The typographical collections of the Plantin-Moretus Museum are internationally incontournable. The Officina Plantiniana was widely renowned for its immaculate and splendidly illustrated print work. Woodblocks were not only used to print book illustrations, but also for ornamental initials and other decorative elements.The collection of nearly 14,000 woodblocks has remained relatively invisible for a long time. In the early 1960’s the woodblocks were treated with a poisonous anti woodworm product, which makes consultation substantially difficult. With the support of the Flemish government the Plantin-Moretus Museum has now digitally photographed the entire collection. By putting online these digital pictures, linked to basic descriptions in the online catalogue, this exceptional and unique collection is now available for use by the international research community and the wider public alike.

The webinar intends to stimulate interest and research in woodblock collections in general and this extremely valuable collection in particular. The seminar is aimed at book and art historians, students, curators and anyone with a keen interest in the wonderful world of woodblocks.

PROGRAMME
16.00 - 16.05
Welcome

16.05 – 17.25
Session 1: Digital approaches to woodblock collections

Jolien Van den Bossche (Museum Plantin-Moretus)
The Digitization Process of the 14,000 Woodblocks

Bruno Vandermeulen & Hendrik Hameeuw (Imaging Lab KU Leuven)
Advanced Imaging of Woodblocks with the Portable Light Dome System

Michael Goodman (Cardiff University)
Things to Make and Do: Making the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive

17.25 – 17.30
Short break

17.30 – 19.00
Session 2: Describing woodblocks stimulates new historical research

Joost Depuydt (Museum Plantin-Moretus)
The Challenge to Describe a Diverse Corpus of 14,000 Woodblocks

Lisa Voigt (Ohio State University)
Tall Tales and Crocodile Tails in Plantin’s Illustrated Travel Accounts

Stephanie Leitch (Florida State University)
Woodblocks and their Afterlives

Moderated discussion after each session.

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

This exhibition celebrating the 300th anniversary of his birth brings this Piranesi principle back to life in all its creativity. It is centred around Piranesi’s masterpieces of engraving, his books, pamphlets, satirical illustrations, and drawings from the collections of the Kunstbibliothek and the Kupferstichkabinett, some of which are being shown for the very first time.

An exhibition catalogue will be published by E.A. Seemann Verlag. Leipzig, 144 pages, 135 colour illustrations, ISBN 978-3-86502-443-5 (German edition), 978-3-86502-444-2 (English edition), RRP: €27.

The Japanese Art Society of America invited Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu (Japan Foundation Associate Curator of Japanese Art and Interim Head of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum) to deliver the lecture “Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965: Japan’s Women Printmakers" on Thursday, November 19, 2020. Please visit the 'External Link' below for a recording of this special program.

Clare Kobasa recently joined the Saint Louis Art Museum as assistant curator of prints, drawings and photographs. Kobasa also will manage the museum’s Print Study Room, where students, scholars and members of the public can make appointments for free viewings of more than 14,000 works on paper in the collection.

“Clare brings a wealth of relevant experience and curiosity to the position,” said Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings and photographs. “We look forward her fruitful collaborations with colleagues throughout the Museum and with the many visitors to the Print Study Room.”

Kobasa recently completed a two-year appointment as the Suzanne Andrée Curatorial Fellow in Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she helped run the museum’s study room for works on paper. She also curated several exhibitions and installations, including “Woodcuts: Groove and Grain,” which explored the variety and malleability of the oldest printmaking medium.

Prior to her position in Philadelphia, she was a predoctoral fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, and held internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University Art Gallery.

Kobasa received a doctorate and a master’s degree in art history from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in art history and history from Swarthmore College.

Saint Louis Art Museum, "Clare Kobasa Joins the Saint Louis Art Museum as assistant curator", News release (October 27, 2020).

This December 28, 2020 will be the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Prairie Print Makers, a democratically-minded organization established “to further the interests of both artists and laymen in print making and collecting.” Ten active printmakers and one art dealer gathered at the Lindsborg studio of Birger Sandzén (1871-1954) to plan out an exhibition society that would also offer a gift print commissioned from well-known printmakers to subscribing members. These "Associate" members paid $5 annual dues, and "Active" artist members paid $1 dues to participate in the traveling print exhibitions. "Honorary" memberships were occasionally bestowed. The exhibitions' academic year schedules quickly filled for venues from Honolulu, Hawaii; to Fort Worth, Texas; to Rochester, New York, as well as providing art experiences for many underserved, small communities in the Midwest. The Prairie Print Makers continued to show and share affordable fine art prints until disbanding in 1966, never having raised their fees and attracting more than a hundred American, Canadian, and United Kingdom printmakers to the roster through the years.

In this exhibition organized from the Sandzén Gallery's permanent collection, 61 of 101 known Prairie Print Maker artists are represented via 112 prints in a variety of techniques. An accompanying, 32-page catalogue is available, underwritten by the Barton P. and Mary D. Cohen Charitable Trust.

Please join us for a free webinar highlighting material in Princeton University Library’s Special Collections on Friday, December 4, 2020 at 2pm EST.

This December we will offer you a tour of our collection of pre-zoom, pre-cinema optical devices and prints, rare artifacts designed for shared public entertainment or personal moments of wonder, leading up to the invention of the motion picture. Julie Mellby, Graphic Arts Curator, will be joined by Christopher Collier, Executive Director, and Jesse Crooks, Operations Director and Head Projectionist for Renew Theaters, who will share some of the history and treasures of Princeton’s Garden Theater.

Through a series of live webcams, we will attempt the phantasmagoria experienced in the past as we peer into 18th-century peepshows, twirl phenakistoscopes, open a gigantic megalethoscope, and crank a miniature cinematograph. Feel the sense of wonder as still images come to life, turning day to night, causing volcanoes to erupt, and conjuring faces to rise from anamorphic chaos.

Please register in advance at the 'External Link' below.

An online "Working Progress" event by Veronica Peselmann, Volkswagen Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History, University of Southern California

Response by Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education, University of Southern California

The twenty color woodcuts in this exhibition at the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery are from the collection of John Impert, Seattle art historian and author of Painters of the Northwest: Impressionism to Modernism, 1900-1930. By the 1880s, Seattle was becoming a center for the arts establishing the Seattle Art Association at what is now the University of Washington, and seeing a great deal of popular interest in printmaking. As the major Northwest port for Pacific trade, examples of Asian art found their way into Seattle homes, particularly Japanese ukiyoe prints, color woodcut “pictures of the floating world.” In 1928 the artist and block carver Yamagishi Kazue (1883-1966) arrived in Seattle to teach Japanese woodcut methods. Kazue’s eager students included Waldo and Corwin Chase and the artist/illustrator Elizabeth Colborne (1885-1948). Brothers Waldo Spore Chase (1895-1988) and Wendell Corwin Chase (1897-1988) came from a very artistic family and, like many Northwest artists, were attracted to the rugged beauty of the mountain ranges and national parks, and focused on landscape in their art.

After holding a variety of jobs and experimenting with photography and hand-colored photographic prints, the Chase brothers decided to work together on color woodcuts, attracted by the relatively simple (and portable) tools required. They studied Frank Morley Fletcher’s (1866-1949) manual, Wood-block Printing, and their initial prints in 1927 were surprisingly accomplished. The brothers taught themselves to sew Indian-style teepees and lived in them on the slopes of Mount Rainier while printing their first woodcuts, nearly 80 of which they gave to hikers passing through Glacier Basin in 1927 in an effort to drum up business. Their initial woodcuts were signed “Chenuis,” an Indian word that for them symbolized a joint endeavor.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to enjoy the lectures presented at Print Study Day, an event organized annually by the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in association with the International Fine Print Dealers Association. The event was held via Zoom on Friday, October 10, 2020.

"Fake News: Dutch Broadsides as Attack Ads, Propaganda, and Lying Pictures in the Seventeenth Century" (starts at 7:11)
Maureen Warren, Curator of European and American Art at the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

"Campaigning for the Presidency: Political humor in Early American Caricature Prints" (28:31)
Allison M. Stagg, independent scholar

"Urgent Images: Chicanx Graphic Arts, 1965-Now" (49:13)
E. Carmen Ramos, Acting Chief Curator and Curator of Latinx Art; and Claudia Zapata, Curatorial Assistant of Latinx Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum


Q&A With Speakers (1:11:33)

Please join the Washington Print Club for a virtual visit to the National Gallery of Art Modern Prints and Drawings Study Room on Tuesday, November 11 at 11am. Shelley Langdale, Curator and Head of Modern Prints and Drawings, will share some recent acquisitions and other works on paper from the Gallery’s collection that she has been contemplating in light of recent events and current projects. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A.

For more information about the Washington Print Club and to sign up for the newsletter, visit https://washingtonprintclub.org/.

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