Mutiny: Works by Géricault explores compelling images by the Romantic period’s most influential artist, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), whose powerful legacy endured long past his untimely death in his early thirties. Approximately 40 drawings, watercolors, lithographs, and paintings from the Harvard Art Museums collections, augmented by loans from three Boston-area collectors, tell a new story of this socially and politically engaged artist across a range of media.

Géricault’s work both reflected and inflected the changes that took place during the Restoration period in Europe. Lasting from roughly 1815 to 1830, this was an ostensibly peaceful time in the aftermath of the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars; yet the continent was still recovering from the earlier violence, and the Industrial Revolution was making its presence felt through increased urbanization and the introduction of new technologies. Recognizing this turmoil, Géricault strove to represent the casual brutality at the center of modern life, forgoing mythological or religious subjects to focus squarely on the present. This interest appears not only in images of wounded soldiers and the urban poor, but also in works depicting men as they interacted with horses as well as in portrayals of animals in distress or at battle. Mutiny considers Géricault as the prototype of the modern artist: rejecting the norms of society in order to expose its tensions and conflicts through depictions of competing extremes—physical strength and weakness.

Géricault is today famed for his paintings, most notably The Raft of the Medusa (now in the Louvre), but during his lifetime he was more widely known for his prints. In this exhibition, three of Géricault’s paintings will be presented alongside the lithographic prints that assured the artist’s posthumous fame. Capturing the world around him with a sense of vivid immediacy, Géricault’s drawings and watercolors are critical to understanding his goals as an artist, and the exhibition will feature 12 of these creations.

Curated by A. Cassandra Albinson, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of European Art; with contributions by Jessie Park, Rousseau Curatorial Fellow in European Art, and Ashley Hannebrink, Curatorial Graduate Student Intern in the Division of European and American Art, Harvard Art Museums.

This exhibition is made possible by funding from the Gurel Student Exhibition Fund. We also thank the three anonymous lenders, each of whom is dedicated to the study and appreciation of Géricault’s work.

One of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) is widely known for his modernist depictions of everyday life as well as epic narratives of African-American history.

Community life, work, struggle, and emancipation, as well as the dynamic city life of Harlem during his lifetime, are vividly represented in these works alongside chronicles of the past, providing insight into the social, economic, and political realities that continue to impact and shape contemporary society today.

Featuring more than 90 works produced from 1963 to 2000, this exhibition explores three major themes of Lawrence’s larger practice and provides a comprehensive overview of Lawrence’s printmaking oeuvre.

History, Labor, Life: The Prints of Jacob Lawrence is curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) head curator of exhibitions. The exhibition is organized by the SCAD Museum of Art and is made possible with support from The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation.

Renowned contemporary Chinese artist Hung LIU (LIU Hung 刘虹) and Trillium Graphics master printer David Salgado have donated 55 works of art to the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art that exemplify the innovative mixed-media techniques they developed in which printed and painted elements are embedded in layers of resin to evocative, gestural effect.

“The JSMA’s traditional Chinese collection forms the foundation of our holdings, but we have few works by contemporary Chinese artists,” says Jill Hartz, JSMA Executive Director. “This is a truly transformative gift that will strengthen our collection and enhance both research and teaching by our curators, faculty, and students for years to come.”

According to Anne Rose Kitagawa, JSMA’s chief curator and curator of Asian art, “Because these works bridge the gap between traditional printmaking and painting, Hung playfully refers to them as za zhong, or ‘bastard paintings,’ acknowledging their hybrid nature.”

Developed for the artist as a proprietary technique by Trillium Graphics, the process’ medium of transparent resin allows the layering of images and gestures embedded in Liu’s oil paintings and other works to fully reveal themselves from surface to depth, as it were, within the visual field of each za zhong work.

“Liu’s subject matter references traditional China--especially women’s history—politics, cultural identity, memory, displacement, and social justice,” says Kitagawa. “Through her art she imparts dignity upon ignored or reviled members of society.”

In 2011, in recognition of the za zhong works produced at Trillium Graphics, Hung Liu received the Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking award from the Southern Graphics Council. Trillium is the proprietary owner and publisher of the za zhong works.

Liu was born in Changchun, China, in 1948 and grew up in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Following her high school graduation in 1968, she was sent to labor in the countryside for four years as part of Mao Zedong’s plan to “re-educate” members of the intellectual class. During this time, she photographed and drew portraits of peasant farmers and their families. In 1972, she went to study art and education at the Revolutionary Entertainment Department of Beijing’s Teachers College, from which she graduated in 1975. She then taught at the Jing Shan School and hosted a weekly televised art lesson called “How to Draw and Paint.”

A Professor Emerita at Mills College in California, Liu is known primarily for her rich, colorful paintings based on historical photographs of Chinese prostitutes, refugees, street performers, soldiers, laborers, prisoners, and children, which she envelopes in veils of dripping linseed oil that, in her words, “both preserve and destroy the image.” In this way, she invents what she calls “weeping realism” that brings faded photos back to life, “summons ghosts,” and expresses the passage of time and the erosion of memory.

David Salgado is the founder, director and owner of Trillium Graphics. Trillium has been making prints and creating cast resin mixed media with prominent bay area artists since 1979. These artists include Nathan Oliveira, Wayne Thiebaud, William Wiley, Paul Wonner, Joseph Raffael, Morris Graves, Theophilius Brown, Eric Fischl, Enrique Chagoya, and Liu Xiao Dong.



As an academic art museum, the JSMA plans to use the Hung Liu za zhong acquisitions as the basis for a series of courses that will culminate in a special exhibition produced in collaboration with University of Oregon faculty and students. Already, two of the works are on display, one in a Chinese exhibition entitled “Reflections of the Cosmic Web: Intricate Patterns in Daoist Art,” on view through April 2019 and the other in the recent-acquisitions show, “A Decade of Collecting,” on view through September 2, 2018.

Ed Ruscha: Archaeology and Romance is the first major exhibition drawn from the Ransom Center's Edward Ruscha Papers and Art Collection. Featuring more than 150 objects, the exhibition presents Ruscha's celebrated books, photographs, drawings, and prints alongside unpublished archival production materials, layout sketches, and studio notebooks.

Organized by Dr. Jessica S. McDonald, the Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography, Ed Ruscha: Archaeology and Romance examines the stages of conception, design, and production leading to the publication of Ruscha's groundbreaking artist's books, and provides audiences with an unprecedented look into Ruscha's creative process.

At the same time, Ed Ruscha: Archaeology and Romance explores Ruscha's persistent engagement with the artifacts of American popular culture, including vernacular architecture, commercial signage, the iconography of the road, and the manufactured romance of Hollywood. The exhibition explores the ways in which the motifs introduced in those landmark books—motifs such as the gasoline station, the apartment building, the palm tree, and the swimming pool—have inspired later works in other media.

Open House at 27 Dunstan St. on Sept 22!

Shepherd Studio, a popular South End print studio started by artist Liz Shepherd has joined forces with Rebekah Lord Gardiner and Maudsleigh Editions to form Shepherd & Maudsleigh Studio. They have relocated to West Newton and are taking the studio into dramatic new creative territory. In addition to continuing to be a resource for printmakers to make etchings, woodcuts, monotypes and silkscreen prints, Shepherd and Lord Gardiner are thinking big: when fully established, there will be enough space for a textile makers space and painters’ studios.

“We want to bring not only all the printmaking, mixed media and textile arts resources that we have to the Newton arts community but also offer space for artists of many disciplines to make their work.”

Artists and the public are invited to explore the new space at an open house on September 22nd from noon to 3pm. There is "open-plan" studio space for printers, and currently they have space for one more printer available.

For more information please contact:
Liz Shepherd: liz@lizshepherd.com or Rebekah Lord Gardiner: rllordg16@gmail.com

Louise Nevelson (1899–1988), an artist best known for her monochromatic wooden sculptures, produced a distinctive body of works on paper over the course of her long career. Drawn entirely from the Whitney’s collection, this exhibition follows her work in drawing, printing, and collage, from her early focus on the human body through her progression into abstraction.

Nevelson frequently used unconventional or recycled materials. In her prints, she layered scraps of fabric to create deeply textured environments containing mystical figures and architectural forms. Her paper collages, like her sculptures assembled from wooden objects, reconfigure the disparate materials from which they are composed, including scraps of paper and foil, into unified, unexpected compositions. Interested in the physical constraints of objects, Nevelson sought to transform the materials that she used and the subjects that she depicted. She believed that art could reorient one’s relationship to the built and natural world, challenging us to see our environments differently through her work.

The Face in the Moon: Drawings and Prints by Louise Nevelson is organized by Clémence White, curatorial assistant.

In the fall of 2018, the BMA’s oldest friends group, the Print, Drawing & Photograph Society (PDPS), will celebrate its 50th anniversary by sponsoring an exhibition to highlight a selection of late 19th-century, modern, and contemporary works on paper that PDPS has helped the BMA acquire over the years. Installed in a gallery adjacent to the Cone Collection, this one gallery exhibition will be organized in two six-month presentations, each including 20–30 prints, drawings, and artists’ books. The crown jewel of the group’s celebration is the gift to the museum’s collection of Joan Miró’s Plate 6 from the “Black and Red Series”.

For the past 50 years, the PDPS has played a major role at the BMA, educating its Members, helping to build the Museum's collection, and supporting important exhibitions and programs. PDPS Members are art lovers, artists, collectors, scholars, docents, teachers, and students—all united by their shared enthusiasm for works on paper.

This exhibition is curated by former Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs Rena Hoisington and Curatorial Assistant Morgan Dowty.

A major figure in the world of American figurative art over the past 60 years, Alex Katz is known for his large scale paintings, sculptures, and prints. His work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions internationally since 1951. Alex Katz: A Life in Print, Selections from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation showcases a series of prints, dating from the late 1960s to the present day, many of which have never before been exhibited. The exhibition is organized around themes of lightness/airiness, portraiture, and variations around the same images and subjects, all presented with a penetrating graphic clarity and keen sense of the history of image-making. Katz’s work, like his New York contemporary Andy Warhol, is always different, yet, in some ways always the same. He has called his prints the ‘final synthesis of painting.’

A Life in Print marks a renewed collaboration between Bellevue Arts Museum and the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation—the largest private print collection in the United States.

Among the works on display are two major pieces shown for the first time on the West Coast. On display in BAM's public Forum space is Chance (2016), a life size depiction of three bathers. In Katz' distinctive ‘cut-out’ pop-art style, Chance celebrates the simple pleasures of summer, the sea, sand, and the company of friends. Alongside the survey of 50 years of print-making, BAM is also pleased to exhibit a portfolio of aquatints of fourteen New York poets, originally produced in 1978, alongside excerpts from each poet’s work. Katz, his wife and muse Ada, and their circle of friends were instrumental in the social, literary, and artistic culture of New York in the '70s and '80s. These portraits depict those lives with a deadpan yet heartfelt sincerity.

Opening Reception: Friday, September 7, 5pm-7pm
Artist Talk: Thursday, September 27, 5pm, PS101

Santa Barbara, CA -- The Atkinson Gallery at Santa Barbara City College is pleased to present Mourning/Warning, an exhibit by Tia Blassingame. Blassingame is a book artist and printmaker exploring the intersection of race, history, and perception. Utilizing printmaking and book arts techniques, she renders racially-charged images and histories for a nuanced discussion on issues of race and racism. Blassingame holds a BA from Princeton University, MA from Corcoran College of Art + Design, and MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design. She has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony. Her artists' books and prints can be found in library and museum collections around the world including Harvard University, Library of Congress, Stanford University, and State Library of Queensland. Her writing is featured in Freedom of the Presses: Artists' Books in the 21st Century, a Booklyn publication.

Featuring 28 prints from the Museum’s collection, including several designs that are the only known impression, Suzuki Harunobu and the Culture of Color offers a rare opportunity to see a rich assembly of work by one of the most celebrated artists in the history of the Japanese print. A painter and print designer, Suzuki Harunobu (1725?–1770) drew his subject matter not only from the urban entertainments of the city of Edo—what was known in his day as ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world”—but also from the classical poetry of China and Japan and scenes of everyday life. Harunobu’s imagery often conveys amusing subtexts that appealed especially to the cognoscenti of his day, but it was the striking color of his prints that drove his success at a critical moment in Japanese printmaking—and that has shaped his legacy ever since.

From about 1765 until his death in 1770, Harunobu dominated the field of full-color prints. Replacing the earlier prints of limited color palette, this technique used five or more woodblocks for each impression. The resulting prints were called “brocade pictures” (nishiki-e), a period term that nods to their sumptuous quality. The earliest single-sheet prints in the full-color technique were private commissions, made for wealthy aesthetes who exchanged them as gifts during the New Year celebrations of 1765 and 1766. Recognizing the appeal of these deluxe objects, Edo publishers quickly adopted the full-color printing technique for commercial use. Working collaboratively with publishers, patrons, carvers, and printers, Harunobu is estimated to have produced as many as 800 distinct print designs in the span of just five years. These nishiki-e transformed the publishing industry for single-sheet prints in Edo. After Harunobu’s career, the culture of color—increasingly saturated, sophisticated, and technically superb—became a fundamental characteristic of Japanese prints.

This exhibition investigates Harunobu’s contributions to the culture of color, as well as our perceptions of his legacy. Critics have long praised the pale, evanescent palette of Harunobu’s prints as evidence of a refined artistic sensibility. However, recent research has shown that his prints originally featured far more saturated, vivid hues, which have been lost over time. The pigments and dyes used in the early years of nishiki-e are highly sensitive to light and moisture. Certain plant-derived organic colorants not only fade, but transmute to another hue entirely. The fresh perspectives on Harunobu’s color offered in this exhibition incorporate the first fruits of an ongoing collaboration, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, between Dr. Tami Lasseter Clare, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Portland State University; Museum Conservator Samantha Springer; and Curator Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu.

After the close of this exhibition, the prints will rest in the Museum vault for several years. However, thanks to a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Portland Art Museum is currently engaged in a multi-year project to photograph, digitize, and re-catalogue the entire Japanese print collection, making it accessible online for audiences worldwide. Images of all of the works in the exhibition can be found in the Museum’s Online Collections.