Viewing the Visual Arts: Printmaking, Past and Present
A five-part series on the year's memorable exhibitions
Point, line, form, shape, movement, color, pattern, and texture are the fundamental elements of visual design. At art’s deeper levels lie creativity, freedom, expression, and emotion. Six galleries around Boston University’s campus, from the independent nonprofit Photographic Resource Center to the 808 Gallery, provide at least one more element of design for students and visiting visual artists: exhibition space.
This week’s series remembers five of the visual arts exhibitions from around campus in 2006 and 2007, ranging from a graphic look at Hispanic stereotypes in American culture to an exploration of the myths and mysteries of Soviet labor camps. Click here to see “You People: A Graphic Look at Hispanic Stereotypes.” Check back tomorrow for “Campus Art, Campus Life.”
Printmaking, Past and Present
The 2007 North American Print Biennial: Collecting from the Boston Printmakers
In 1948, the newly created Boston Printmakers organization hosted its first exhibition of works by local artists from the Boston Museum School and the Massachusetts College of Art. Held at the former Paine Furniture store in downtown Boston’s Park Square, the exhibition blended traditional techniques and the most innovative printmaking methods of the time, ranging from etchings and lino cuts to lithographs and serigraphs.
Six decades later, the Boston Printmakers and Boston University included many of those prints in a new exhibition, Sixty Years of North American Prints: Collecting from the Boston Printmakers. The show, which opened on February 8 at the Stone Gallery of the Boston University Art Gallery, incorporated printmaking from the 1940s through today and was curated by David Acton, the curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Worcester Art Museum. It included work from international artists as well as from local printmakers such as Lynne Allen, director of the school of visual arts at the College of Fine Arts.
The exhibition was part of the Boston Printmakers 2007 North American Print Biennial, which had several shows running concurrently at Boston University.
“Printmaking, Past and Present” originally appeared on BU Today in February 2007.