Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures, co-curated by Tia Blassingame and Stephanie Sauer, offers a new definition of paper­ within a global and decolonial framework. Featuring works by local, national, and international artists, this exhibition explores the vital role substrates play in human communities and how meaning is made from what we might call paper and papermaking.

Viewed together, the works on display seek to open a conversation around what paper is across cultures today: a vessel for collective memory, a body, a site of meaning, a living ancestor, and a form of cultural survival and resistance. Our ideas about paper are linked to how we value traditions of language, know­ledge production, creative expression, storytelling, and history. Many of us think of paper as thin sheets fashioned from fibrous pulp, but this understanding leans heavily on European applications and usage, with its roots in ancient Chinese technology and centuries of violent occupation, enslavement, and trade.

This exhibition is the first public presentation of an outstanding Midwestern collection amassed over four decades by printmakers and educators David and Sarojini Johnson. The display features relief and intaglio prints created by more than 25 artist printmakers represented in the Johnsons’ collection, including works by Francisco Goya, Lea Grundig, Stanley William Hayter, Mauricio Lasansky, and Sue Coe. The selection emphasizes the contributions of German Expressionist and Midwestern artists, with concentrations of art condemned by the Nazis as degenerate (entartete Kunst) and the legacy of printmaking at Atelier 17. These works are juxtaposed with several prints from the David Owsley Museum of Art’s collection that incorporate items acquired for the museum with David Johnson’s advice. A catalogue with essays by the collectors and contemporary Midwestern printmakers examines the democratic foundation of print collecting and the Johnsons’ desire to acquire works on paper of historical significance, quality, and social impact.

Kenyon College, a highly selective, nationally ranked liberal arts college in central Ohio, invites applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Modern Art History. This is a two-year appointment that will begin in August 2023. The successful candidate will specialize in the art and architecture of the early modern world (c. 1400–1800).

The successful applicant will be able to teach broadly in their field. The selected candidate will teach five total classes. In addition to teaching ARHS 111 Introduction to Western Art: Renaissance to Contemporary, the selected candidate will teach four additional courses that emphasize their research and teaching specialties. Applicants should complement, not duplicate, current expertise of the department. The selected candidate may have the opportunity to provide mentorship to honors projects.

To apply, candidates should visit the online application site found at http://careers.kenyon.edu. All applications received by Sunday April 16th will be fully considered.

Beginning in the 1960s, artists engaged in printmaking shifted away from autographic mark making and craftwork, toward critiquing methods of representation, communication, commerce, and society itself. They embraced a diverse range of unorthodox processes, many of which came about by placing concept before technique, breaking down boundaries between mediums. Six decades later in a media-saturated and digitally-interconnected present, many artists are returning to traditional print processes and hand-crafted matrices to create biting and beautiful commentary. Presenting a wide range of contemporary artists and their ideas, this talk surveys the recent trajectory and prolific use of printed art.

Pop-up books go back centuries. Since at least the 1100s, readers have been lifting flaps, spinning dials, and opening elaborate three-dimensional spreads in the pages of books. The earliest interactive texts were intended for scholars. Over time, pop-up books found new audiences and grew in popularity, engaging a wide range of users from emperors to mathematicians to children.

Featuring books, maps, and ephemera from the Newberry collection, Pop-Up Books through the Ages traces the extensive history of hands-on reading. Tactile, interactive components can be found in everything from a 1489 astronomical calendar and a 1775 battle map to a 1932 edition of Pinocchio. Viewing these different items in one place, visitors will see how the art, science, and business of pop-up books evolved over hundreds of years.

In addition to exploring the past, the exhibition highlights the present and future of pop-up books, including the work of contemporary book and paper artists who are pushing the form in new directions. Two of these artists, Hannah Batsel and Shawn Sheehy, have even designed a pop-up version of the Newberry that you can take home and construct yourself!

Visit the link below for more information

Water tusche is a material unique to lithography that can create painterly and reticulated marks. This material is notoriously difficult to master, even for the experienced printmaker.

Join us on Friday, April 7th at 11 AM MST for a live demonstration on water tusche washes led by Student Printers at Tamarind Institute. The entire process will be covered, from the mixing and application, etching, rolling up washes on stone, as well as troubleshooting. Examples of washes from the Tamarind archive will also be shown. All skill levels are welcome and encouraged to attend.

This will also be recorded for anyone unable to attend, or for future reference.

Register at the link below.

Paul Coldwell is a practicing artist and Professor in Fine Art at the University of the Arts London. He has exhibited widely, his work included in numerous public collections, including Tate, V&A, The British Museum, Arts Council of England, the Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva and MoMA (New York).
This exhibition presents a selection of prints made by Coldwell including a recent portfolio of etchings entitled The Studio, created during lockdown from small models assembled in his studio. The prints explore the genre of still life, beginning as playful constructions and evolved through manipulation in the computer, before being realised as multiple blocks woodcuts with each block laser cut and hand printed by the artist.
Throughout his career he has acknowledged the profound influence of the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi. Like Morandi, Coldwell’s work is focused on objects, the everyday items which accompany our daily lives but that have little financial value. Through this, the intention is to focus on incidental events and relationships and propose alternative values.

The Princeton University Art Museum has announced the appointment of Jun Nakamura as Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings. He began his appointment on February 20.

At Princeton, Nakamura will work with the Museum’s extensive collections of more than 15,000 prints and drawings, comprising European, British, Latin American, and North American works from the fifteenth century to the present.

Prior to his appointment at Princeton, Nakamura was Suzanne Andrée Curatorial Fellow in Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he curated Macho Men: Hypermasculinity in Dutch and American Prints (2022–2023), and co-curated Pictures in Pictures (2022), Expressions (2021), and Of God & Country: American Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection (2023). Previously, he held positions at Leiden University and the National Gallery of Art. He earned a PhD in art history from the University of Michigan, with a dissertation on the use and meaning of professional engraving style in the seventeenth-century Netherlands and beyond. He has an MA in art history from Southern Methodist University and a BFA in fashion design and art history from Washington University in St. Louis.

“Jun brings to the Museum an unusually wide range of expertise and interests, from seventeenth-century Dutch art to twentieth-century American printmaking, to the techniques of printmaking themselves, affording a rare combination of depth and breadth,” said James Steward, the Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director. “We’re thrilled to have him join our Museum as we prepare for the launch of our new building and the first years of exhibitions and collections installations.”