Tandem Press to host printmaking symposium

Tandem Press will host “Printmaking: Steeped in the Past, Shaping the Future,” a free printmaking symposium at the Chazen Museum of Art, on Thursday, Jan. 31 and Friday, Feb. 1.

The symposium has been organized in conjunction with the exhibition “Tandem Press: 25 Years of Printmaking,” which closes on Sunday, Feb. 3. Distinguished national leaders in the print world will speak at the symposium.

Symposium highlights include tours, lectures and panel discussions by speakers who will share their varied perspectives on the world of printmaking.

The internationally recognized print collector Leslie Garfield will describe how he started his collection; senior curator Joann Moser of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Gretchen Wagner, curator at the Pulizer Foundation for the Arts, will discuss curatorial directions in the 21st century with Andrew Stevens, curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Chazen Museum of Art.

UW–Madison art department faculty members Michael Connors, Jack Damer, John Hitchcock and William Weege, the retired founder of Tandem Press, will discuss the national pre-eminence of Tandem’s printmaking program.

The distinguished curator and professor Chen Xiaowen will talk about his curatorial selection for American Printmaking Now, the exhibition that toured to the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, and three other Chinese museums.

Paul Klein, founder of Klein Art Works in Chicago, and Michele Senecal, Director of the International Fine Print Dealers Association, will demystify aspects of a career in the art world. Jason Ruhl, master printer at Tandem Press, will discuss the role of digital media in printmaking today, and Richard Solomon and Jason Lewis from Pace Editions will discuss how they identify emerging artists.

The symposium will conclude with observations by Faye Hirsch, editor-at-large at Art in America and author of “The Tandem Society,” an essay in the catalogue accompanying the Tandem exhibition.

Tours of print exhibitions at the Chazen Museum of Art will include “Tandem Press: 25 Years of Printmaking” and also German and Austrian Prints: 1890–1925 with Professor Barbara Buenger, Art History Department, UW–Madison, and at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art Ellsworth Kelly Prints and The Force of Color with director Stephen Fleischman.

For complete symposium program details and biographical information for the participants click here.

The symposium is made possible by grants from the Anonymous Fund and the Brittingham Trust.