Date unknown, 1981: The 22nd National Print Exhibition, the only major invitational biennial in the United States, opens at The Brooklyn Museum on October 3rd and will be on view through January 3rd. Since the first exhibition in 1947, the Print National has been a showcase for the best and most innovative work being done in the field of prints. It is not, and has never attempted to be, a survey of masterpieces, showing work only by the established masters.
The Brooklyn Museum’s Print Nationals are indeed national in representation. Gene Baro, Consulting Curator, travels throughout the country visiting artists’ studios, college campuses, and experimental workshops. He does not rely solely on established galleries and famous print publishers. A unique feature of the Print National is that no works for the exhibition are chosen on the basis of slides. Most juried print shows are selected only from slides, so that the jurors do not see the actual work until after the exhibition has been selected. Mr. Baro actually goes out into the field, away from the established centers of printmaking, finding artists in the south, west, and mid-west who have no New York gallery representation and only a local reputation.
Twelve of the seventy-three artists in the exhibition were totally unknown to the department, having been selected from open viewings at the museum. Thirty-nine artists are showing for the first time ever in a Brooklyn Print National. Sixteen artists are thirty years old or younger. The oldest artist making his Print National debut is Sam Glankoff, 86, one of those selected from the open viewings. Throughout the years out-of-town artists have found gallery representation through dealers who first saw their work at The Brooklyn Museum.
The 22nd National Print Exhibition will show, as in previous years, a full representation of the state of the art. Both traditional craftsman-printmakers and painter-printmakers who bring a new vision to the medium will be represented. The Print National is a microcosm of the newest and of the very best in printmaking today.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1981, 014-15.
