Katherine Mintie, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Harvard Art Museums, examines a group of political posters made by artist Ben Shahn in the 1940s. This essay is part of Harvard Art Museums From Home, a series of online programs presented while the museums are closed that spotlights new stories about the collections.

Renowned and prize-winning art historian Michael Lobel, Professor, Art History at Hunter College, shares insights from his ground-breaking research exploring the influences from the period’s print popular culture on the thinking and art of Vincent Van Gogh, one of the most beloved and enigmatic artists of all time. While we’ve all seen the work of Van Gogh in innumerable printed formats—in posters, exhibition catalogues, and full-color reproductions of all sorts—many are less familiar with the artist’s keen interest in the print culture of his time. This lecture will survey some of Van Gogh’s most significant influences of that type, particularly from the 19th-century English illustrated press, and explore their profound impact on his thinking and his art. Event will conclude with live virtual Q&A.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to view the recording of this event.

After a short presentation on Mail Art in Argentina and Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s, Blanton Museum Curators Vanessa Davidson and Florencia Bazzano will discuss Mail Art in Latin America as an artistic survival strategy. A potent means of subversion that flew under the radar of government censorship, Mail Art enabled Latin American artists to establish relationships with like-minded artists around the globe during an era in which social distancing was strictly enforced by repressive military regimes. After dictatorship, in the 1980s and 1990s, Mail Art functioned as a life-line to international collaborators and friends all over the world who Latin American artists “met” by using the postal system as a ready-made medium to be subverted to artistic ends.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to view the recording of this event.

Join Met curators for a look at exemplary works from Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints: Collectors' Collections, an installation devoted to several transformative gifts made by passionate collectors who focused their attention on specific artists, schools, or genres. This virtual event is captioned.

Presenters:
Nadine M. Orenstein, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge, Drawings and Prints, The Met
Allison Rudnick, Assistant Curator, Drawings and Prints, The Met

Please visit the 'External Link' below to attend.

It is with sincere regret that the IPH 2020 Planning Committee announces the postponement of the 35th IPH Congress in Washington DC originally planned for September 15-18, 2020. Although we all hope that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic will be over by this fall, we cannot be certain that the outbreak will be resolved by that time. Travel within America and overseas travel from Europe to the US are both severely restricted for the foreseeable future. Potential conference speakers and attendees will wish to see how the situation resolves in their home state or country before they can commit to coming to Washington DC. It is a time when our mutual interest in paper history must yield to more pressing concerns.

Together with the IPH Council, the Planning Committee will announce a new date in 2021 for the Congress on its website. We have planned an enticing program with thirty-two outstanding speakers from around the world, and we wish to give them the opportunity to present their research to the largest possible audience. The new date for registration will be announced after the Congress dates have been determined. We thank you for your understanding and flexibility.

Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information.

“Pulse 2019” is a video contemplating the human condition. The intertwined evolution of humans in the environment, and the existence of communities both in the physical sense as well as in broader social and political sense. Throughout history, humans have also left their mark in their environment at times remarkable monuments and at times remnants reclaimed by natural elements.

In the words of the artist, “I would hope to encourage self-observation, in the context of broader surroundings and the environment. It takes a good measure of humbleness to fully comprehend one’s state and obligations, in light of corresponding relationships with others. It is pertinent, in my opinion, to exercise sufficient modesty and respect to the environment and society, our critical habitat”.

The video also focuses on the use of varied media combining drawing, woodcut, rubbing, carved wood panels and structures. Woodcuts are spoon printed on large custom-made sheets of paper. Panels of paper are hung adjacent to carved wood panels. A grid of warmer wooden matrices and cooler white prints and rubbing matching materials and their morphology as well as depicted content.

Pulse 2019, is inspired by the recent installation at the Wilfrid Israel Museum including three large works: Aurora, Laver and Doubt.

Produced by, Marjorie Shelley (Department of Paper Conservation), Ashley Dunn and Constance McPhee (Department of Drawings and Prints), Paul Lachenauer and Xue Chen (Imaging), and colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

To celebrate the 100th birthday of Sacramento’s most renowned artist, the Crocker Art Museum presents Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings. Best known for his tantalizing paintings of cakes and pies, Thiebaud has long been affiliated with Pop art, though his body of work is far more expansive. This exhibition represents the artist’s achievements in all media, with pieces drawn from both the Crocker’s holdings and from the collection of the Thiebaud family—many of which, until now, have never been shown publicly. For the Crocker, the show also continues a tradition of hosting a Thiebaud exhibition each decade, beginning with the artist’s first solo show in 1951, Influences on a Young Painter. In 2020, we celebrate the life and career of an artist whose work is beloved not only in California, but internationally.

How does someone build an art collection? For John A. Robertson (1943–2017), a renowned bioethics scholar and distinguished professor at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law, the process was both dynamic and highly personal. Robertson’s wide-ranging collection of modern and contemporary works on paper, nurtured by his own passion for art, his friendship with esteemed UT art historian Richard Shiff, and a longstanding relationship with the Blanton, grew to include works by international, Texan, and UT-affiliated artists.

This exhibition celebrates Robertson’s generosity and legacy with a selection of prints, drawings, collages, and photographs from the nearly ninety works of art he donated to the Blanton. With pieces by Michael Ray Charles, Sue Coe, Philip Guston, Dorothy Hood, Terry Winters, Glenn Ligon, Peter Saul, and Richard Serra—many of which will be on view for the first time—Off the Walls presents a unique slice through recent decades of art on paper.

The exhibition will also feature UT Professor Emeritus Bill Lundberg’s pioneering film installation Swimmer (1975), which Robertson helped the Blanton acquire in 2008.

Born and raised in Minneapolis, William Peter Kosmas (1940–2017) was a London-based attorney who devoted his practice to representing and advising contemporary artists, writers, and performers. Kosmas’s professional specialties dovetailed with his lifelong passion for collecting artists’ books and works on paper, resulting in an extensive personal collection of modern and contemporary art that was recently donated to Mia by the Kosmas estate. This exhibition will feature a selection of more than 60 artists’ books and original prints by prominent European, Japanese, and American artists and writers, reflecting Kosmas’s wide-ranging interests in art, poetry, and classical literature. The display includes important works by Joan Miró, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Richard Hamilton, Shinro Ohtake, Federico García Lorca, Samuel Beckett, Josef Albers, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Betye Saar, and the German book artist Veronika Schäpers, among many others.