The University of Richmond Museums presents What’s New: Recent Gifts to the Harnett Print Study Center, on view from August 20 to October 6, 2014, in the Harnett Museum of Art and Print Study Center. This exhibition features prints, drawings, and photographs donated to the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center during the past two years. The exhibition celebrates the broad range of the permanent collection presenting various printmaking methods such as etching, lithography, screenprinting, and photography, among others.
What’s New highlights screenprints by American artist Andy Warhol (1928-1987), including Sitting Bull, 1986, and Fiesta Pig, 1979. A total of 161 photographs, Polaroid photographs, and screenprints were donated in 2008 by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. to the University of Richmond Museums through The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program. The Legacy program, launched in 2007, has donated more than 28,500 original photographs to more than 180 universities across the United States. Phase two of this legacy program included Warhol’s “extras out of edition screenprints,” seven of which were presented to the University of Richmond Museums in 2013.
Minimalist inspired works by seventeen artists, donated from the collection of Sally and Wynn Kramarsky, are included in the What’s New exhibition. In this gift are works by William Anastasi (American, born 1933), Jill Baroff (American, born 1954), Mel Bochner (American, born 1940), Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007), Tristan Perich (American, born 1982), Allyson Strafella (American, born 1969), and others. Each gift from Wynn Kramarsky is “a balance of well known and fairly unknown artists, blending them together to create a group that will best benefit the museum to which it is given,” stated Rachel Nackman, Curator, Sally & Wynn Kramarsky Collection.
Nancy Rica Schiff (American, 1945) has donated portrait photographs she took during the 1980s of figures important to the development of the art world. Included within this gift are portraits of the artist Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), a Russian-born, American painter interested in daily scenes for whom Schiff modeled; Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992), a photographer who captured stunning artistic shots of dancers in motion from the 1930s onward; Comedian, award-winning actor, and best-selling writer George Burns (American, 1896-1996); and Norman Vincent Peale (American, 1898-1993), minister, professional motivational speaker, and author of the book The Power of Positive Thinking.
Other recent gifts in the exhibition range from a nineteenth-century landscape print by Joseph Hartogensis (Dutch, 1822-1865), to exquisite drawings by Kawanabe Kyôsai (Japanese, 1831-1889), to modern and contemporary works by John Cage (American, 1912-1992), Anthony Panzera (American, born 1941), and Beth Van Hoesen (American, 1926-2010), to photographs by Lucien Clergue (French, born 1934), and Alen MacWeeney (Irish, born 1939), among others.
The exhibition also features a selection of stereopticon cards dating from the late 19th to 20th centuries, donated by Thomas and Donna Brumfield. Stereoscopy, invented in the 1840s, creates an illusion of a 3D image when viewed through a special binocular viewer. A selection of the stereographic cards will be displayed and visitors will have the opportunity to see the stereographic cards through a viewer.
The exhibition was co-curated by Richard Waller, Executive Director, University of Richmond Museums, and Emily King, ′15, studio art major, University of Richmond, and 2014 Harnett Summer Research Fellow, University Museums.
Founded in 2001, the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center houses the permanent collection of works on paper of the University of Richmond Museums and serves as a research center for the study and exhibition of prints, drawings, and photographs. With more than 6,000 works on paper in the collection by artists from the fifteenth century to the present, the Center promotes exposure to original works of art to the University’s students, faculty, and staff as well as the Richmond community and the region. Through research, programs, publications, and exhibitions, the Harnett Print Study Center encourages the study and appreciation of works on paper and the visual arts.
Named in honor of Joel and Lila Harnett, the Center continues to actively add to the collection. Among the donated artworks given to the museum over the past two years, the exhibition includes gifts from E. Mark Adams and Beth Van Hoesen Adams Trust, Stephen Addiss and Audrey Yoshiko Seo, Fabiana Andrade, Anonymous, Thomas and Donna Brumfield, Sheila and Wynne Hutchings, Ray Kass, James P. Kearney, ’85, Sally and Wynn Kramarsky, Ann Peery (WC ’56) Oppenhimer and William Oppenhimer, Anthony Panzera, Charles Phillips, ’86, Nancy Rica Schiff, Susan Schulman, Carl and Elizabeth Solway, Welford Dunaway and Carol Taylor, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Friday, September 19, 2014, 2 to 2:30 p.m.
Curator’s Talk, Harnett Museum of Art, Modlin Center for the Arts
The World as [Eye] See It
Emily King, ’15, studio art major, University of Richmond, 2014 Harnett Summer Research Fellow, University of Richmond Museums
