The University of Richmond Museums opens 40 Years of Printmaking: From the Center Street Studio Archives, on view in the Harnett Museum of Art, January 19 through March 26, 2021. The exhibition features prints by contemporary artists that were printed by James Stroud, artist, master printer, and founder/director of the Center Street Studio in Milton, Massachusetts, since the Studio’s establishment in 1984. The Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, has been acquiring these prints since 1998 as part of the Center Street Studio Archives in the Harnett Print Study Center permanent collection.

This selection highlights the remarkable collaboration between the master printer and the artist that has been the hallmark of the Center Street Studio since its beginning, producing hundreds of prints of extraordinary quality by artists of national and international reputation. The wealth of artworks and documentation contained in the Archives is utilized as a primary source for both research and exhibition at the University Museums. As the repository of the Studio’s ongoing artistic production, the Harnett Print Study Center provides students, scholars, artists, and the community with an important resource for contemporary printmaking.

Center Street Studio Director, James Stroud states, “Over the past 40 years of making prints with other artists, I have had some wonderful opportunities to pull prints outside of my normal publishing activities. From printing Rembrandt plates for museums to proofing the backs of plates for an artist’s archive, this exhibition has several of those quirky projects that are fun to look at and talk about, including Gail Singer’s print from 1981, the first project that I served as master printer. The exhibition offers some intriguing new projects from the Studio in addition to some earlier prints published during the last four decades. I hope you will enjoy this opportunity to see “behind the scenes” projects from Center Street Studio.”