"The Early Years of Lithography" presents early nineteenth-century lithographs from the collection of the K. Ubāns Art Reading Room at the National Library of Latvia. The artworks will be complemented by video stories demonstrating the technique and assessing the place that classic lithography holds and its ability to coexist with contemporary technologies.

In addition to lesser-known works, the exhibition also includes masterpieces by renowned artists such as Johann Nepomuk Strixner (1782−1855), Eugène Delacroix (1798−1863), Théodore Géricault (1791−1824). "The Monk’s Head" by artist Wilhelm Reuter (1768−1834)−a unique example of German early lithography and one of the oldest lithographic folios in the Library’s collection−is particularly worth seeing. The collection’s jewel in the crown though is Faust, Wagner, and the Water Dog by Delacroix, which shows Doctor Faust and his assistant Wagner meeting a black dog.

The works selected for the exhibition give an overview of the technical options offered by lithography, and the diversity of its characteristic genres and subjects. These include landscapes with historical and topical motifs, portraits, religious scenes, and illustrations of everyday life. The exhibition also includes caricatures as, in the 19th century, the lithography technique served as one of the leading propagators of criticism of the elite. In many works, romantic imagery stands alongside documentary images and the recording of events.

The NLL's graphic arts collection is one of the largest and most significant foreign print collections in Latvia. The exhibited works are part of a donation of over 10,000 items by the German art historian Peter Böttger, a collection donated to the Library in 2016.

Early twentieth-century American artists sought to provide diverse perspectives on the shifting world around them. With works drawn from local museums and a private collection, True Grit provides a survey of early twentieth-century printmaking together with a complementary selection of photographs from the Getty’s permanent collection. Compelling depictions convey a broad view of American culture that includes dance halls and boxing rings, skyscrapers and subways, parks, and tenement apartments. Using innovative techniques, these American artists captured the gritty world around them and came to terms with modern life.

“Change Agent” highlights June Wayne’s legacy as an artist, printmaker, educator and activist. Wayne refused to follow a signature style, taking on a variety of themes such as personal history, modern science and social issues. In the Dorothy Series, she narrates the life of her mother, a Russian Jewish immigrant and traveling saleswoman for a garter company. In the Stellar Winds and Solar Flares Series, she mines natural phenomena as metaphors for the human condition.

Wayne was a catalyst for the revival of fine art lithography in the United States, a medium which had all but vanished by the 1950s. She championed lithography as an art form as vital as painting after studying the technique in Paris with the printer Marcel Durassier. With a grant from the Ford Foundation, Wayne founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1960. The experimental workshop created a pool of printers and apprentices, as artists from across the country were invited to master the process of lithography. Now known as the Tamarind Institute of the University of New Mexico, it continues Wayne’s visionary plan as a major training center for fine art printers.

Along with prints by Wayne, “Change Agent” also features lithographs by internationally-known artists who trained at Tamarind such as Ed Ruscha, Matsumi Kanemitsu and Fritz Scholder. All of the works in the exhibition are drawn from the ASU Art Museum’s Jules Heller Print Study Room, which houses a collection of 6,000 prints from throughout history and around the world.

Artist printmaker Carlos Barberena will discuss his development as a self-taught artist as well as his involvement with a number of artist collectives and studio workshops, including Instituto Gráfico de Chicago. Barberena's print, Mater Dolorosa, is featured in MOLAA’s current exhibition, Gráfica América and depicts the mother Álvaro Conrado, a student killed at a protest against Nicaragua’s repressive government. A printmaking demonstration and opportunity to create a print with the artist will follow the presentation.

Barberena is a Nicaraguan-American printmaker currently based out of Chicago, Illinois. He is founder of Bandolero Press, La Calaca Press, and co-founder and member of Instituto Gráfico de Chicago. His works examine the effects of historic and contemporary political events throughout the Americas, particularly on his homeland of Nicaragua.

Members free; non-members free with paid museum admission

The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region is full of boundaries and borders, both physical—like the state lines that divide these artists—and imagined—political ideology, economic class, gender identity, religious belief. These boundaries delineate spaces, groups, ideas, and more, but they are easily walked over, pushed through, and broken down. Furthermore, the artists featured in Crossing Boundaries and Breaking Borders: DMV Printmaking also question, push, and break down the traditional notions of what printmaking is as a technique, how it can be used, and how printmaking can be defined.

FEATURING ARTISTS
Danqi Cai, Brigitte Caramanna, Eric Celarier, Justyne Fischer, Jenny Freestone, Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Maggie Gourlay, Amelia Hankin, Mimi Herbert, Marty Ittner, Nilou Kazemzadeh, Brian Kirk, Lauren G. Koch, Jun Lee, Pete Morelewicz, Gretchen Schermerhorn, Gail Shaw-Clemons, Terry Svat, and R.L. Tillman

This summer, discover the pioneering printmakers who captured the spirit of 1930s Britain in this first major show of work from the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. Bringing together 120 prints, drawing and posters, Cutting Edge features iconic works from Claude Flight and eight of his leading students including Sybil Andrews, Cyril Power, Lill Tschudi, William Greengrass and Leonard Beaumont.

The School played a key role in the story of Modern art and quickly became a leading force in the production of printmaking – in particular, linocuts. The Grosvenor artists were renowned for their iconic, vibrant prints that championed the energy of contemporary life in the interwar years. Influenced by the radical expressions of Futurism, Vorticism and Cubism, the Grosvenor School gave its own unique interpretation of the contemporary world, incorporating art deco elements, a punchy geometric style and a vivid palette.

Cutting Edge champions the medium of the block-print linocut, which influential teacher and artist Claude Flight described as “an art of the people” due to its affordability and accessibility. Highlighting the radically changing times of the interwar period, the exhibition will explore themes of transport, speed and movement, industry, labour and sport and leisure, as well as showcasing the original tools, lino blocks and studies that revolutionised the printmaking process.

As part of the exhibition, Japanese paper cut artist, Nahoko Kojima will create a unique sculpture for the Gallery’s entrance hall. This installation will respond to the power of narrative and movement that is represented through the work of The Grosvenor School artist’s linocuts.

This exhibition celebrates UConn Professor Emeritus of Printmaking Gus Mazzocca’s gift to the Benton of more than 150 prints by Polish artists. The prints, executed between 1958 and 2004, came to Mazzocca through the exchange program that he established in 1984 with the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. Produced largely during the 1970s and 1980s, the prints provide an opportunity to sample artistic production in Krakow during the Cold War, when Poland became a satellite state of the Soviet Union. The exhibition’s title, presented in both Polish and English, suggests how printmaking helped artists involved in the exchange transcend cultural and political barriers to find common ground.

Krannert Art Museum has amassed the largest museum collection of early modern Dutch political prints outside of Europe, thanks to strategic acquisitions guided by Maureen Warren, KAM’s curator of European and American art.

During the past year, KAM has added more than 100 Dutch political prints from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries. They portray a broad range of themes and formats, and add a wide variety of printmakers to KAM’s already strong collection of works on paper. In addition to political propaganda and satire, the newly acquired prints include views of the daily lives of women that depict their relative autonomy and independence in Dutch society. Other prints show images of Dutch naval power, trade, war and crime.

Warren, a leading print curator and scholar of early modern Dutch art, is curating the exhibition, planned for fall 2021 and provisionally titled “Fake News and Lying Pictures: Political Prints in the Dutch Golden Age.” The museum received a grant from the Getty Foundation to support the exhibition and an accompanying publication through The Paper Project, a funding initiative focused on prints and drawings curatorship. The exhibition will look at how images were used to put a favorable spin on events and persuade people to believe a certain retelling of history.

Please visit the 'External Link' below to read the full, illustrated press release published by Warren's colleagues at KAM.

The array of prints featured in this exhibition emerged from the specific historical events initiated when a fleet commandeered by US Commodore Matthew C. Perry first landed in Japan in 1853. Perry’s arrival marked the beginning of a period of mutual curiosity between two cultures, and his mission was to open Japan to trade after more than 200 years of restrictive policies under the Tokugawa shoguns. The terms of the trade treaty were not finalized until 1858, at which time five Japanese ports—including Yokohama, the most active—were opened to the member nations: the United States, France, England, Russia, and the Netherlands. Surrounded on all sides by water, the modest foreign settlement at Yokohama was designed to both contain and protect the newcomers.

Prints known as Yokohama-e, or “pictures of Yokohama,” soon capitalized on the novelty of the people and goods coming into the busy international port. The Japanese public had a great appetite for news about the arrivals, and publishers enjoyed a much-needed boost to their businesses when they mass-produced commercial images of this fresh subject matter. However, Yokohama-e were often misrepresented as realistic or factual. While a few of the images take genuine, observed scenes as their source, the prints were often based on engravings in foreign newspapers. Japanese artists created convincing or amusing scenes of Western customs, dress, technology, and transport, and even American cities, often fictionalizing them in the process. The resulting prints found an eager audience among visitors from Europe and the United States as well as domestically.

The Norton Museum of Art will present the largest ever museum exhibition of classic movie posters from one of the most prominent private collections in the world. Titled Coming Soon: Film Posters from the Dwight M. Cleveland Collection, the exhibition comprises more than 200 posters representing comedies, musicals, Westerns, sci-fi thrillers, dramas, and others that date from the turn of the 20th century to the late 1980s. The exhibition provides a colorful and comprehensive overview of the history and allure of Hollywood – and movie poster art. Posters of iconic films, such as Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain, and North by Northwest, as well as memorable cult classics including Barbarella and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, will be featured in this exhibition. Coming Soon not only celebrates one collector’s passion, but also provides a rare survey of the history of film posters and their station in popular culture.