The Georgia Museum of Art is the recipient of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative, which supports education in fine arts and art history. The gift includes 22 prints by Helen Frankenthaler and a $25,000 grant to develop a program based on the artworks.
With this donation, the museum hopes to shed new light on Frankenthaler’s work and to highlight in an exhibition and publication how her relatively unknown experimental sculptural ceramics influenced her prints and paintings. The prints include techniques such as lithography, etching, screen printing, aquatint and woodcut and date from 1967 to 1991. Several are completed with handwork and 12 are proofs for Frankenthaler’s “Bronze Smoke,” showing how the artist developed her ideas.
“The donation of the prints allows us to look deeper into Helen Frankenthaler’s legacy and see how her work continues to resonate with contemporary artists and with us today,” said Kathryn Hill, the museum’s assistant curator of modern and contemporary art.
Recipients of the initiative are chosen for their commitment to collecting and using prints as teaching tools, a cause the museum has been committed to throughout its 75-year history. Each semester, dozens of University of Georgia courses use the collection, particularly the works on paper, to study original artworks in person. The foundation’s mission is to support the fine arts through education and philanthropy.
The Frankenthal Prints Initiative was launched in 2018. The first round of the initiative resulted in nine exhibitions, three academic courses, and four symposia. Other recipients of the initiative include the Block Museum of Art, the Grey Art Gallery, and the Cantor Arts Center.
Frankenthaler was an American abstract painter known for her soak stain technique and unique approach to art. She said, “There are no rules…that’s how art is made, that’s how breakthroughs happen. Breaking the rules or ignoring them is what invention is all about.”
