Touchstone: 200 Years of Artists' Lithographs

, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, , University of Michigan Museum of Art, , Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, , William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums University of Michigan Museum of Art Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

With the exhibition Touchstone: 200 Years of Artists’ Lithographs the Harvard University Art Museums is one of many museums nationally and internationally to mark the 200th anniversary of the revolutionary printing process now called lithography. Since its invention in 1798 when it was called chemical printing from stone, lithography has developed in every imaginable direction. Commercially, lithography has been adapted to the production of everything from microchip wafers to barn-sized posters. Lithographs can be produced from photographs, and now from digitally captured images and computerized instructions compiled as bitmaps. Yet lithography has also remained a premier fine-art print process. Approximately 85 works are on display including lithographs by Goya, Delacroix, Géricault, Manet, Degas, Kollwitz, Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Kirchner, Nolde, Ernst, de Kooning, Frankenthaler, Rauschenberg, Johns, and Kelly.

Touchstone is organized by Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, who is also the author of the accompanying catalogue.

Installation of this exhibition has been supported by the Seymour Slive Teaching Exhibition Fund. Albert H. Gordon, an alumnus of Harvard College this year celebrating his 75th reunion, generously supported the publication of the catalogue.

Exhibition Objects