by Richard WallerExecutive Director,University of Richmond Museums

“Thirty seconds of revelation is worth a million years of knowing nothing,” exclaims Gulley Jim-son, the artist and social rebel who is the main character in Joyce Carey’s 1944 novel, The Horse’s Mouth. Eliciting those exciting mo-ments of revelation are at the heart of the mission of the print study center established in 2001 as a museum at the University of Richmond.

One of three museums that comprise the University of Richmond Museums, The

Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center celebrates its seventeenth anniversary this fall. Opening on September 22, 2001, the center was named to honor and recognize the generosity and guid-ance of Joel (a 1945 graduate of the University) and Lila Harnett in founding the museum. Lila Harnett continues to be an innovative leader in the arts and a strong supporter of our University Museums. The Harnetts were true game chang-ers, instrumental in making the visual arts so im-portant at the University of Richmond.

The center remains the only university museum in the region dedicated to the study, collection, and exhibition of works on paper, including prints, drawings, paintings, and photographs.

Today, our print research center houses more than 14,000 works in the collection, spanning more than 500 years, from the fifteenth century to the present and primarily by European and American artists. Closely intertwined with our other two museums, The Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art and the Lora Robins Gallery of Design from Nature, the University Museums maintain a rigor-ous exhibition schedule and continue to develop interactions with faculty and students from aca-demic departments across the University campus and with scholars and artists from the community and around the world.

Our museum’s history of collecting, researching, and presenting works on paper is fascinating and delightfully full of the horse’s mouth “revelations,”

Page 8 October, 2018 © Journal of the Print World, 2018. All rights reserved. 1-603-267-7349

The Joel and Lila HarnettPrint Study Center @ 17

Eliciting exciting moments of revelation

are at the heart of the mission of the

print study center ...

but we will focus for the moment on the present and future. The Harnett Print Study Center is cur-rently presenting three exhibitions drawn from the permanent collection. In the Harnett Museum of Art, the two exhibitions are Infinite Choices: Abstract Drawings by Al Held, and Man Up! Man Down! Images of Masculinity from the Harnett Print Study Center Collection, both on view through July 7, 2019. The Human Com-

edy: Prints and Drawings by Isabel Bishop is on view in the Harnett Print Study Center through April 19, 2019. The exhibitions epitomize the ex-hibition possibilities our collection gives us: the Al Held (American, 1928-2005) drawings high-light a recent gift to the museum; Isabel Bishop’s (American, 1902-1988) exhibition is devoted to one artist and the development of her artistic vi-sion; and the images of masculinity allows us to select a range of images to explore a theme, see the portrait prints by Fritz Scholder (below) and

Diego Lasansky (left) from the exhibition. Recent acquisitions, such as the Al Held drawings, not only give us new strengths in the collection but continued on next page

Adriaen Collaert (Flemish, 1560-1618), after Joos de Momper (Flemish, 1564-1635)"October, from the series Twelve Months of the Year" circa 1600, engraving on paper, 7 1/2 x 10 3/8 inches

Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, Museum purchase, funds from the Louis S. Booth Arts Fund, H2008.21.11

© University of Richmond Museums, photograph by Taylor Dabney

Diego Lasansky (American, born 1994)"Portrait at Eighteen," 2014, etching with collage,

graphite, colored pencil, and ink on paper, 35 1/2 x 23 1/2 inches

Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study CenterUniversity of Richmond Museums

Museum purchase, from The 2014 Harnett Biennial of American Prints, H2014.34.01, © Diego Lasansky,

photograph by Taylor Dabney

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901) "La Revue blanche," 1895, lithograph printed in four

colors on wove paper, 49 7/16 x 35 7/8 inchesJoel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center

University of Richmond Museums, Gift of Jan and Howard Hendler, H2018.12.01

© University of Richmond Museumsphotograph by Taylor Dabney

Fritz Scholder (American, 1937-2005) "Portrait" 1985, lithograph on Arches cover

buff paper, 30 x 22 inchesJoel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center

University of Richmond MuseumsGift of Charles and Moira Geoffrion in honor of

Lila Harnett, H2010.07.03© University of Richmond Museums,

photograph by Taylor Dabney

also provide opportunities to develop exhibitions; see the recent gift to the museum of a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec that will surely be the catalyst for a future project.

“Why University Museums Matter” is the title of a short essay by Holland Cotter, art critic for The New York Times, written in 2009, in which he writes, “University museums are un-like other museums. . . They are, before all else, teaching instruments intended for hands-on use by students and scholars. The public museum gives us fabulousness. The tucked-away univer-sity gallery gives us life: organic, intimate, and as fresh as news.” He emphasizes that university museums are “equal parts classroom, laboratory, entertainment center, and spiritual gym where good ideas are worked out and bad ideas are worked off.” My only disagreement with him is that I think university museums often give you some of that “fabulousness.”

From a 1998 exhibition that we organized of prints and portfolios published by Cen-

ter Street Studio, just outside of Boston, and run by artist and master printer James Stroud, came the idea of acquiring one of each of the works published, along with working proofs and other ephemera from these contemporary artists. The collaboration between master printer and art-ist has been the remarkable hallmark of Center Street Studio since its beginnings in 1984, and the Studio has produced hundreds of prints by artists of national and international reputation.

This acquisition gives our collection an archive of a print publisher from our own time. Last spring, we presented an exhibition, titled Bon à Tirer Prints & Monotypes: From the Center Street Studio Archives, devoted to recent works from the studio; see the abstract monotype by Carrie Moyer (below) and the etching by George Whit-man from the exhibition. Noting the importance of Center Street Studio as a valuable artistic re-source, Clifford S. Ackley, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, also stat-ed that “printmaking can document the unfolding of the artist’s creative process.” As the repository of the Studio’s ongoing production, the Harnett Print Study Center has an important and timely resource at the museum.

Page 9 October, 2018 © Journal of the Print World, 2018. All rights reserved. 1-603-267-7349

Richard Waller is Executive Director of the Univer-sity of Richmond Museums, comprising the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, the Joel and Lila Har-nett Print Study Center, and the Lora Robins Gallery of Design from Nature. He received his M.F.A. from Yale University, M.A from University of Wisconsin Madison, and B.A. from Minnesota State Universi-ty Mankato. He was Chief Designer at the Brooklyn Museum for many years while teaching at New York’s Parsons School of Design before joining the University of Richmond in 1990. During his museum career, he has curated and organized many exhibitions of both historical and contemporary art and has written ex-tensively on the visual arts. At the University Muse-ums, he has brought hundreds of exhibitions to Rich-mond including organizing national tours of select exhibitions. As part of the faculty of the University’s Department of Art and Art History he has taught stu-dio art, art history, and museum studies courses, and is co-director of the Arts Management Concentration including supervision of internships for undergradu-ate students.

Richard Waller, Executive DirectorUniversity of Richmond Museums

453 Westhampton WayRichmond, Virginia 23173

804-287-6614rwaller@richmond.edumuseums.richmond.edu

Richard Waller, Executive DirectorUniversity of Richmond Museums,

shown in the Harnett Print Study Center looking at a recent gift of charcoal drawings

of Italian landscapes by Ray Ciarrocchi (American, born 1933).

The Joel and Lila HarnettPrint Study Center @ 17

Carrie Moyer (American, born 1960)“Swash 4A,” 2015, watercolor monotype on paper

24 7/8 x 18 1/4 inchesJoel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center

University of Richmond MuseumsCenter Street Studio Archives, H2017.18.34

© Carrie Moyerphotograph by Taylor Dabney

George Whitman (American, born 1944) “Tucker,” 2017, etching with chine collé on paper, 26 x 32 inchesJoel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, Center Street Studio Archives,

H2017.18.04 © George Whitman, photograph by Taylor Dabney

Why study prints? That’s a question we asked in the brochure print-ed at the founding of our museum in 2001, and remains easy to answer for a print study center at a university, and of course this applies to all types of works on paper. Prints provide a truly unique opportunity for viewers to learn about artists, es-pecially their working styles and their influences and environments. Old master prints in particular reveal the hand of the artist, and when successive stages or states of a print are available, the viewer is able to see the process that goes into making an image. Most prints are intended to be produced in editions and to be distributed widely. Hence their subject matter, especially in the early years of the medium, was focused on religion, educa-tional themes, or current events.

We are currently working on an exhibition titled The Printed World: Masterpieces of Seven-teenth-Century Printmaking from the Frank Raysor Collection and the Harnett Print Study Center Collection, working in collaboration with Frank Raysor, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the VMFA’s Frank Raysor Center for the Study of Works on Paper. The project created an oppor-tunity for the museum’s director to co-curate the exhibition with Morgan Mitchell, ’20, an art his-tory major at the University of Richmond and the recipient of our 2018 Harnett Summer Research Fellowship, established by Joel and Lila Harnett in 2002. Several of our former Harnett Fellows have gone on to leading careers in the museum field, and Morgan is continuing her art history studies in London this fall semester. The Printed World focuses on the seventeenth century, and it will be arranged in sections to highlight how art-ists and printmakers depicted their world within the context of new styles, technology, discovery, and exploration. See the engraving (page 8) from circa 1600 by Adriaen Collaert illustrating the month of October that will be in the exhibition.

Happy birthday to the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center at the University of Richmond. As we continue to be a thriving and exciting research center for the study of works on paper, join us in celebrating our first seventeen years.