In November, The Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery at The Art Students League of New York opens its final exhibition of the calendar year: Two Generations of Women Printmakers: Atelier 17 and The Art Students League, guest curated by independent scholar Dr. Christina Weyl. This exhibition presents a little-known legacy in the history of 20th-century American art and is framed by a question: What does the nearly 150-year-old Manhattan art school share with the avant-garde printmaking studio Atelier 17, formed in the late 1920s in interwar Paris? These two important artistic centers are more intertwined than previously known.
Through a limited selection of print works by 24 artists, our exhibition demonstrates three major points of connection between The League and Atelier 17: educational lineage, the high level of student accomplishment, and the development of sustaining relationships between these artists, in an art world that was frequently less supportive of entrepreneurial women.
Augmenting this exhibition, Dr. Weyl will present a lecture on the exhibition Tuesday, November 9 in the Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery. This live talk will bring to life the stories our exhibition tells, spotlighting the rich possibilities that printmaking presented to women across two generations of artists. This program will be broadcast online through The League’s YouTube channel. You will need a ticket to access the live event.
Christina Weyl: Christina Weyl is an independent scholar and curator with expertise on twentieth-century American printmaking. She received her BA from Georgetown University (2005) and completed her MA and PhD in art history at Rutgers University (2012, 2015). Her recent book, The Women of Atelier 17: Modernist Printmaking in Midcentury New York (Yale University Press, 2019), which grew from her dissertation, highlights the nearly 100 women artists who advanced modernism and feminism at Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking studio located in New York City between 1940 and 1955. In addition to the present show, she is currently curating an exhibition for the International Print Center of New York focusing on Margaret Lowengrund and her pioneering effort to establish The Contemporaries as a hybrid printmaking workshop/gallery. She has published in Art in Print, Print Quarterly, and Archives of American Art Journal and contributed to several anthologies and exhibition catalogues. From 2014-2018, she served as Co-President of the Association of Print Scholars, a non-profit professional organization she co-founded in 2014. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked for IFPDA member Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl, which representing the publications of the Los Angeles–based artists’ workshop Gemini G.E.L. (2019-2020).
Featured Image Credit: Bessie Marsh Brewer, Untitled. Ink on paper, 10 x 8 in. Permanent collection of The Art Students League.