But yet she holds my mind / With her seedy elegance, / With her gentle veils of rain / And all her ghosts that walk / And all that hide behind / Her Georgian facades.’ Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

Dublin has famously inspired writers including Louis MacNeice, whose poem ‘Dublin’ evokes the city of the 1940s. The city and surrounding countryside has inspired many visual artists as well. This exhibition of works on paper is drawn from the Gallery’s own collection, which includes a wealth of Dublin-related images in a wide variety of media. Landscapes, figure studies and portraits will be arranged in the Print Gallery’s newly refurbished display cases, depicting how Dublin was interpreted by artists over the centuries.

Centre-stage will be group of magnificent large-scale watercolours by James Malton who painted the fine public buildings of the eighteenth century. Images of the people of Dublin by Walter Osborne, Sarah Purser and Michael Healy will sit alongside topographical works by artists like Michael Angelo Hayes; Flora Mitchell; and William Orpen, and give a real sense of Dublin as a lively and changing place, home to a diversity of citizens throughout its history.

The Descrizione del Sacro Monte della Vernia (1612) depicts the monastery and dramatic rocky terrain of La Verna, the site where Saint Francis received the stigmata. The gifted baroque draftsman Jacopo Ligozzi was hired to illustrate the volume and he cleverly designed overslips pasted on 5 of the 22 engraved illustrations in a before-and­-after fashion to demonstrate the changes to the topography since Saint Francis’s time. Drawing on the Gallery’s holdings of Franciscan imagery, spanning the 15th through the 18th centuries, this exhibition places the Descrizione del Sacro Monte della Vernia within its most significant artistic and art historical context by examining traditional representations of the experiences of Saint Francis on the mountain of La Verna and innovations on traditional Franciscan subject matter characteristic of the Counter Reformation.

Unfettered by practical considerations, Giovanni Battista Piranesi created spectacular architecture realized only on paper. In his series of etched prisons, he welcomes you into the darkest recesses of his mind. Upon entering these dank, menacing dungeons, you may find yourself lost in gloomy labyrinths of stairways and catwalks littered with engines of torture and the remains of a lost civilization. Don’t worry: if the door slams behind you, it’s only your imagination.

Focussing on key objects from the 15th to the 21st centuries, this exhibition features a selection of some of the Fitzwilliam’s most spectacular prints, and gives visitors an insight into the extraordinary breadth of the collection.

See works by some of the greatest Old Master printmakers, including Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) and Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), hanging alongside prints by later artists such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

Globalization, women’s rights, Trump: the poster has established itself as an effective medium for political struggle. 50 years after 1968, the onset of a worldwide rebellion, this exhibition presents around 300 international protest posters. The spectrum ranges from Käthe Kollwitz’s emotional appeal against war to the legendary messages of the Parisian Atelier Populaire and contemporary political manifestos. The designs dismantle rulers, denounce injustice, or lend utopia a face. They are instances of visual memory, appeal to the necessity of resistance today, and prove the topicality and universality of the depicted themes. Accompanied by protest songs, videos, and images from virtual space, the exhibition showcases the work of socially engaged designers and illuminates various strategies of protest.

One of the most significant figures in the development of American abstraction, Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928–2011) i is best known for her monumental and boldly gestural canvases awash in vibrant hues. Lesser known are the prints that the artist produced at the print workshop Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) over nearly two decades—images that, while decidedly smaller, capture the same whimsical beauty found in her brilliant canvases. Featuring over 50 prints from Frankenthaler’s time at ULAE, this exhibition reveals an artist enchanted with what she called “the romance of a new medium.”

Born in New York City, Frankenthaler received her earliest art instruction from the Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo while a student at the Dalton School in New York and studied with the influential artist and teacher Paul Feeley at Bennington College in Vermont. After graduating in 1949, she returned to New York, where her paintings caught the attention of the famous art critic Clement Greenberg, who championed her originality. In the early 1950s, Frankenthaler developed her signature “soak stain” technique by thinning her paints with turpentine or kerosene to facilitate absorption into the canvas. The resulting images, with their translucency, bridge Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting, at once full of the energy of making and the beauty of color.

It wasn’t until 1961 that Tatyana Grosman, with the assistance of the artists Grace Hartigan and Larry Rivers, lured a hesitant Frankenthaler to ULAE, Grosman’s newly formed print workshop on Long Island. Having never made prints before, Frankenthaler feared her spontaneity and large-scale approach to painting would not translate to the more modestly sized stones used in lithography. However, her introductory experience working with master printer Robert Blackburn on her first print, called simply First Stone, vanquished those fears, and a full-fledged printmaker was born. Over the next 17 years, Frankenthaler embraced lithography, etching, aquatint, and woodcut, producing over 30 editioned prints that are rich with vitality and evidence Frankenthaler’s obsession with redefining the medium.

This exhibition presents the Art Institute’s nearly comprehensive catalogue of Frankenthaler’s ULAE production together with loans from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. Included are never-before-displayed proofs that illustrate the artist’s working method, explore the evolution of an image from initial idea to final published edition, and demonstrate Frankenthaler’s unwavering passion for printmaking.

A rare set of exquisite lithographs depicting the pastel drawings of planets, comets, eclipses, and other celestial wonders by artist/astronomer Étienne Léopold Trouvelot (1827-1895) are highlighted in the focused exhibition “Radiant Beauty: E. L. Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings.” The set of 15 chromolithographs, published in two portfolios as The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings in 1882, was the crowning achievement of an extraordinarily talented artist and scientist who produced more than 7,000 astronomical illustrations and some 50 scientific articles during his lifetime. Initially, the Astronomical Drawings portfolios were sold to astronomy libraries and observatories as reference tools, but as early 20th-century advances in photographic technology allowed for more accurate and detailed depictions of the stars, planets, and phenomena, Trouvelot’s prints were discarded or sold to collectors. The Huntington’s set was acquired by collector Jay T. Last as part of his collection of graphic arts and social history, and then donated to The Huntington.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Cole’s arrival from England in 1818, the Thomas Cole Site is partnering with the Yale Center for British Art to present the special exhibition Picturesque and Sublime: Thomas Cole’s Trans-Atlantic Inheritance in Thomas Cole’s New Studio. This exhibition is designed to complement the major Cole exhibition at The Met and is curated by Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art at Yale; Gillian Forrester, Senior Curator of European Art at the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester (and previously at the Yale Center for British Art); Jennifer Raab, Associate Professor of the History of Art at Yale; and two doctoral candidates at Yale, Sophie Lynford and Nicholas Robbins.

Picturesque and Sublime will present masterworks on paper by major British artists, including Turner and Constable, together with significant oil-on-canvas paintings by Thomas Cole to demonstrate Cole’s radical achievement of transforming the well-developed British traditions of landscape representations into a new bold formulation, the American Sublime.

Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Empire State Development’s I LOVE NEW YORK program under the Market NY initiative, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services LLC, Greene County Legislature through the County Initiative Program of the Greene County Council on the Arts, and the Kindred Spirits Society of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. The catalogue is supported by the Willow Springs Charitable Trust and Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

IMMA presents Brian O’Doherty Language and Space, in association with fine art print studio Stoney Road Press, Dublin. Presented in the context of our Collections exhibition Coast-Lines, this solo exhibition includes a number of works by Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland from IMMA’s National Collection, in addition to drawings from the 1960s, Structural Plays and new works recently published by Stoney Road Press as limited editioned prints.

Brian O’Doherty Language and Space marks the artist’s lifelong commitment to exploring line, language and location, and is a timely celebration of the ten-year anniversary of his performance The Burial of Patrick Ireland at IMMA in 2008.

All of the works on display evoke the discourse between mind and body that has absorbed Brian O’Doherty throughout his career. Many are inspired by Ogham script – an ancient Celtic translation of the Roman alphabet into a writing system of 20 linear characters. No Irish artist has placed Ogham so centrally to their work as O’Doherty/Ireland. In the mid-1960s, the artist brought this 1,500 year old language into New York’s avant-garde dialogue. Ogham allowed O'Doherty/Ireland to combine his interests in minimal-conceptual systems of expression, the senses and language - concerns right at the centre of critical thinking among the 1960s avant-garde, of whom he was a pioneering figure. He has focused extensively on Ogham’s vowels: A O U E I, which in their linear appearance and sound, have informed a vast range of his work ever since.

Commenting on the exhibition Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections at IMMA said; “On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Burial of Patrick Ireland at IMMA, we are delighted to again work with artist Brian O’Doherty. This exhibition reflects the artist’s lifelong commitment to exploring line, language, identity and the senses and in this, his 90th year, acknowledges the extraordinarily prescient nature of this artist’s ideas and expression, which continue to push boundaries and provoke new thinking in art today.”

Commenting on working with Brian O’Doherty, James O’Nolan, Co-Director of his long time collaborators Stoney Road Press said; “We figured out how to register the complex web of coloured hatching he favoured, using separate etching plates, and I began to understand that these were not just drawings, they also possessed a voice. An Ogham voice. Later, working on the Structural Plays, I appreciated that not only had they had a voice, but many could be performed as well. I suppose it could be said that these were the first prints I worked on that were all singing and all dancing.”

Brian O’Doherty is a figurehead of Irish and international contemporary art and his work holds notable legacy in Ireland. Over the past 60 years, he has invoked various identities in pursuit of his art. In 1972, as a patriotic gesture in response to Bloody Sunday and the political and civic unrest in Northern Ireland, O’Doherty performed Name Change at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, as part of the annual Irish Exhibition of Living Art. After a performance of the Ogham vowels, the artist changed his name from Brian O’Doherty to Patrick Ireland in the presence of a Notary Public. The masked, reclining artist was painted orange and green by fellow artists Robert Ballagh and Brian King, giving him the appearance of an atrocity victim.

For the next 36 years, Brian O’Doherty published writing as an art critic, whilst Patrick Ireland continued to work as an artist. On 20 May 2008, following the establishment of a power-sharing government and peace in Northern Ireland, the effigy of Patrick Ireland was placed in a coffin and his identity was waked and buried in the formal gardens of IMMA. During this performance called The Burial of Patrick Ireland the artist reassumed his birth name Brian O’Doherty.