New York, September 26, 2018 – The IFPDA Foundation is pleased to announce its 2018 grant recipients. Each year, the Foundation provides financial support to museums and non-profit organizations for exhibitions, publications, and educational projects that promote a greater awareness and understanding of printmaking as an artistic medium.

The six grant recipients are: International Print Center New York (New York, NY); Lawrence Arts Center (Lawrence, KS); Opalka Gallery at the Sage College of Albany (Albany, NY); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA); Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA); and the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (Hyattsville, MD).

Since its establishment in 2009, the IFPDA Foundation has aimed to inspire and support educational projects aimed at fostering a deeper understanding of prints. “As a part of our mission to further the dialogue surrounding printmaking, we are proud to support these institutions in their work and look forward to seeing these projects engage new audiences of print enthusiasts,” notes Robert Newman, IFPDA Foundation President, and President of The Old Print Shop.

2018 IFPDA Grant Recipient Projects:

The International Print Center New York’s PRINTFEST 2018 is a student art fair, which offers MFA and senior BFA printmaking students the opportunity to network, exhibit, and sell their work to the public during New York City's Print Week. Expanding upon the success of PRINTFEST 2017, this year IPCNY plans to actively seek the participation of university programs beyond the tri-state area, encouraging cultural and regional diversity. Additional programming will include a panel discussion and printmaking demonstrations. IPCNY’s 4th annual PRINTFEST will take place Thursday, October 25 - Saturday, October 27, 2018 in two gallery spaces at 508 West 26th Street on the 3rd and 5th Floors in Chelsea, New York.

The Lawrence Arts Center will be funded to support Rethink: I Am a Veteran, a storytelling project centered on the lives of women veterans and taking the form of a printmaking-based art installation, scenic design that incorporates hand-printed text and images, and a theatrical production to premiere the weekend before Veterans Day in November 2018. A one-day free workshop will also be offered the weekend before the performance, allowing the public to assist in printmaking in preparation for the performance.

The Opalka Gallery at the Sage College of Albany will be hosting The Screenprint Biennial 2018, an art exhibition that showcases a range of screenprint-based art applications, from framed, editioned prints, to installation, sculpture, video, ephemera, and posters. This juried exhibition will showcase artists from around the country who utilize adventurous, relevant and passionate takes on screenprinting. Three artists (Tonja Torgerson, Shelia Goloborotko, and Tatiana Potts) will also travel to the Biennial to install site-specific screenprint artworks.

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA) will be hosting From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic, an exhibition of early American landscapes with a focus on Philadelphia, will include a section of the exhibition devoted to prints and works on paper. The exhibition will be on view in PAFA’s 7,000 square foot Fisher Brooks Gallery from June to December 2019. Curated by Anna O. Marley, PAFA’s Curator of Historical American Art, the exhibition will delve into the important and underexplored tradition of landscape representation in Philadelphia from the Early American Republic to the Civil War (1775-1861) and how that tradition shaped the better-known Hudson River School. The exhibition will also include a satellite show in PAFA’s Richard C. von Hess Works on Paper Gallery, curated by Ramey Mize, PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and curatorial intern at PAFA which will provide a closer look at a wide range of printmaking techniques.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has been awarded a grant in support of the exhibition Splendor and Spectacle: The Prints of Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) to be held exclusively at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from March 8 – June 9, 2019. A rich, monographic exploration of this Japanese ukiyo-e master’s work, the exhibition will include approximately seventy prints ranging from established themes—like kabuki actors and historic battles—to contemporary scenes commissioned by the country’s burgeoning newspaper industry. Organized by Shelley R. Langdale, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, the exhibition is drawn entirely from the Museum’s own collection of over 1,200 prints by Yoshitoshi, the largest collection of his work located outside of Japan.

The IFPDA Foundation will fund a new project of archiving and digitizing the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center collection of prints to create an online database. This database will be made public, linked from the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center’s website, and contain images and details of works printed at the Center that date back to the organization’s founding in 1981. This resource will be used both as an electronic exhibition, a teaching tool, and a means to curate future exhibitions. From their collection of approximately 500 works on paper, initial work on this project has already rediscovered prints by such well-known artists such as Renee Stout, Tanja Softic, Joyce Scott, William Christenberry, and Hung Liu.

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About the IFPDA

Founded in 1987, the International Fine Print Dealers Association is a non-profit organization of expert art dealers dedicated to the highest standards of quality, ethics and connoisseurship. The IFPDA has grown to include nearly 160 members in 13 countries, whose areas of specialization range from old master and modern to contemporary prints, including publishers of prints by renowned contemporary and emerging artists. The IFPDA aims to promote a greater appreciation and a deeper understanding of fine prints among art collectors and the general public through the annual Fine Art Print Fair, as well as public programming, awards, and funding for institutions via its public charity, the IFPDA Foundation.

About the IFPDA Foundation

The IFPDA Foundation was established in 2009 to inspire and support educational projects aimed at fostering connoisseurship in the field of fine prints for a new generation of collectors, curators, and specialists. Its annual grants program provides direct financial support to exhibitions and scholarly projects that cultivate a deeper understanding of prints and their value as an art form. It also administers the annual Richard Hamilton Acquisition Prize, generously sponsored by Champion and Partners, which enables museums to acquire important works for their collections. In 2014, the Foundation initiated its Curatorial Internship Program which funds internships in museum print collections. Each institution has conceived a distinctive program that offers an invaluable opportunity for a young scholar to obtain object-based working experience in its print collection under the guidance of the field’s leading specialists. More at ifpdafoundation.org