Tamarind: Forty Years of Lithography August 20 to December 14, 2003 Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums Tamarind: Forty Years of Lithography features 59 prints drawn from the Tamarind Archives at the University Art Museum at the University of New Mexico. More than fifty artists are represented, including Clinton Adams, Josef Albers, Robert Colescott, Roy De Forest, Richard Diebenkorn, Leon Golub, Philip Guston, Nicholas Krushenick, George McNeil, Louise Nevelson, Philip Pearlstein, Jack Tworkov, June Wayne, and William T. Wiley. In 2000, the Tamarind Institute celebrated its 40th anniversary. From its beginning as the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, to its continuation in Albuquerque as the Tamarind Institute, a division of the University of New Mexico’s College of Fine Arts, Tamarind founders and their successors have devoted themselves to the stimulation and preservation of the art of lithography. For forty-three years artists and printers have been coming together at Tamarind to collaborate and experiment with the potential of lithography.
From its inception Tamarind has had many goals — to encourage artists working in many styles to explore the potential of lithography, to train master printers who can facilitate that exploration, to accustom artists and printers to working in close collaboration, and to encourage both artists and printers to experiment to expand the expressive possibilities of lithography. In 1980, then director of Tamarind, Clinton Adams, set a goal for Tamarind, “to restore the prestige of lithography by creating a collection of extraordinary lithographs.” Tamarind’s success as an arena of exploration for artists and printers may be seen in this exhibition which presents a selection of lithographs created during Tamarind’s fruitful life. The exhibition was organized by the University of New Mexico Art Museum by Kathleen Howe, Curator of Prints and Photographs, and Marjorie Devon, Director of Tamarind Institute, and is traveling under the auspices of the Traveling Exhibition Program of the Museum of New Mexico. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, Tamarind: Forty Years, published by the University of New Mexico Press, which is available at the University Museums.