WASHINGTON, D.C. — “Prints are not marginal.” Judith Brodie, curator and head of the department of Modern prints and drawings at the National Gallery, spoke with confidence about the often-overlooked medium. “Through the exhibition and catalog we reveal the story of prints, one that parallels the history of American art. They set, and kept, the pace.” She and Amy Johnston, assistant curator of prints and drawings, have co-curated “Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art” on view at the museum through July 24.
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the National Gallery, they have produced an exhibition of remarkable quality and historical sweep drawn solely from the institution’s holdings. The National Gallery’s acquisition of important print collections over the years has made such an expansive show possible.
To comprehend the rarity of this highly anticipated project, consider that a major museum last mounted a comparable appraisal of American graphics more than three decades ago. After the exhibition closes in Washington, D.C., it will travel to Prague and to Mexico City, locales selected because they are uncommon venues for American art exhibitions.
Observing that the museum-going public favors painting, sculpture, architecture and now photography over prints, Brodie related that she and Johnston “wanted to bring prints to the fore, but we did not want to get tripped up by the technical.” She has noticed that many people feel they need to know how to create a print to appreciate one, a high bar not faced by other arts such as photography or architecture. In Brodie’s opinion, deep knowledge of printmaking is not a prerequisite for enjoyment.
“I don’t want to burden viewers,” she said. “If they’re interested in technique, great. But I want them to look at these works and see that they are intertwined with the story of American art.” (Print connoisseurs should have no fear. The catalog contains exacting technical information in the glossary, exhibition checklist and portions of the text.)
This ambitious retrospective resulted from a convergence of events. According to Brodie, mounting a three-century survey from the museum’s own collection was feasible after the 2008 acquisition of the Reba and Dave Williams collection of 5,200 prints. For the early section of the exhibition, she and Johnston plucked gems from Harry W. Havemeyer’s recent gift and promised gift of 177 Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Century prints.
Then there was the unanticipated closing of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2014. Appointed steward of the Corcoran’s holdings, the National Gallery of Art was directed to choose the most suitable works for its own collection and to distribute the rest. A number of these additions appear in the exhibition. They include Charles Saint-Memin’s unbound album containing 833 annotated engravings dating 1796 to 1810, Paul Revere’s “Buried With Him in Baptism,” the 1851 engraving “Mexican News” by Alfred Jones after Richard Caton Woodville’s painting and Mary Cassatt’s “The Letter.”
For those who love the clarity of numbers, Brodie noted in conversation and in her catalog essay that “between 1950 and 2000, the American prints collection grew from just over 1,900 to nearly 12,000 works — more than a sixfold increase. And in the past 15 years, the collection has almost doubled, now numbering some 22,500 prints.” The exhibition, installed in nine galleries, contains more than 150 prints.
Asked about exhibition highlights, Brodie pointed to two print offerings as powerful independently and even more so in combination. They are the 1710 print set “Four Indian Kings” by John Simons and Kara Walker’s “no world” of 2010. Taken together, they underscore the theme of 300 years of printmaking since they are the earliest and most recent works in the exhibition.
The “Indian Kings” depicted were Mohawk and Mahican leaders who made a transatlantic voyage in 1710 to meet Queen Anne at court, an event that caused much excitement. Brodie described these mezzotints after painted portraits by John Verelst as illustrations of Colonial-era exchange.
This curator also selected Walker’s print, which, she stated, “shows ambiguity. There is a ship and a figure underwater who is probably African American. There is a man holding up a pipe and an Indian. This print talks about the slave trade and alludes to its disastrous impact in the new American Colonies.” Through the title “no world,” Walker seems to mock the term “New World” and its implied optimism.
Johnston made it her crusade to spotlight highly talented but lesser-known artists such as Fanny Palmer, Martin Lewis, Peggy Bacon and Mabel Dwight while still paying tribute to the eminent James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, George Bellows and Jackson Pollock.
As an example, Johnston referred to Fanny Palmer, who “was a prolific artist at Currier & Ives and one of their most important artists. She had started with her own lithography firm with her husband, but it did not go well and she ended up having to support her family. She worked on the lithographic stone and was not just a colorist as many women there were. She produced 170 prints credited to her name at Currier & Ives and she contributed to the firm’s aesthetic.” Brodie added, “We had a tiny number of Currier & Ives prints because our collection is about artistic quality, but we purchased a couple by Fanny Palmer with this exhibition in mind.” The co-curators included “A Midnight Race on the Mississippi” of 1860 and “‘Wooding Up’ on the Mississippi” of 1863 to characterize Palmer’s style.
Johnston also called attention to Martin Lewis, a mentor of Edward Hopper, who is recognized for his etchings of New York scenes made in the 1920s and 1930s. She picked his “Stoops in the Snow” with its masterful lights and darks as a favorite.
The exhibition is accompanied by the 360-page catalog Three Centuries of American Prints from The National Gallery of Art. Brodie reflects, “We think it is one of the rare volumes, and maybe the only volume, to lay out the entire history of American prints from 1710 to 2010. You have to have the collection to support it. I don’t think there is another survey of this type.” Johnston and Brodie concurred that the exhibition and catalog project “was a wonderful assignment.”
The innovative and handsomely illustrated companion volume makes its own lasting impression. It contains a foreword by Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art; an overarching essay by Michael J. Lewis, the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard professor of art history at Williams College; and 14 shorter essays. Strong supplementary sections include artists’ biographies with an emphasis on printmaking activities, a detailed glossary, an exhibition checklist and an extensive bibliography.
Desirous that the catalog be a vehicle for sharing novel perspectives, Brodie and Johnston explained that while all the essayists are knowledgeable about American art, they are not all print specialists. Before I understood a more iconoclastic approach was in play, I found myself laughing while reading the catalog text and then realizing sharply that something was amiss. Print exhibition catalogs are not generally known for their biting wit.
As a sample of the unexpected discourse, take a drink from “Paul Revere’s Caffeine: The Bloody Massacre,” an irreverent, stimulant-infused romp in and around the engraving issued by the famous Colonial artisan-incendiary. As is well known, the print shows British troops firing upon a crowd, killing five Bostonians, in response to a snowball attack on March 5, 1770. Revere issued it not only for monetary gain, but also to help bring public outrage to a boil. Art historian Alexander Nemerov riffs on this propaganda piece’s connections to Coffee House culture, the irony of Revere’s stealing an image epitomizing moral outrage from Henry Pelham and the surprising lightness of line and overall design in a scene depicting such gravitas.
Aside from this splendid exhibition and catalog, print lovers have much to entice them at the moment. In New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “The Power of Prints, The Legacy of William M. Ivins and A. Hyatt Mayor” is on view through May 22. The exhibition and accompanying catalog mark the 100th anniversary of the Met’s prints department and honor the achievements of these curators who played a vital role in the formation of the museum’s collection while also striving to promote the more widespread enjoyment of prints.
The exhibition “Frank Hartley Anderson: Forging the Southern Printmakers Society” runs until June 19 at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting “Breaking Ground: Printmaking in the US, 1940–1960” through July 24. At the Art Institute of Chicago, “Van Dyck, Rembrandt and the Portrait Print” continues through August 7 and is accompanied by a catalog produced by Yale University Press.
After closing in Washington, “Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art” travels to the National Gallery in Prague October 4–January 5, and to the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City February 7– April 30, 2017.
The National Gallery is on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. For information, 202-737-4215 or www.nga.gov.
