At the Berman, Printmaking | Worldmaking Invokes Time Before the Digital Age
The museum also presents three other exhibitions through December 17 and a public opening reception for all the Berman’s current exhibitions will take place on Thursday, September 14, at 6 p.m.
As consumers of digital and social mass media, many of us take photographs on mobile devices of people we love and occasions we want to remember. But before modern technology made capturing these moments instantaneous, prints were a particularly effective medium for “worldmaking.”
This fall, the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College presents, Printmaking | Worldmaking, an exhibition that showcases a selection of prints old and new that engage in acts of worldmaking—the construction of stories, sites, and sights, real and invented.
“We’re so excited to share these works from the Berman’s permanent collection with our audiences,” Berman Museum Executive Director Lauren McCardel said. “The exhibition offers a fresh perspective on how we communicate with each other as humans through print media, and as the product of many minds, it’s a testament to the power of collaborative creativity. There’s something for everyone to connect with here.”
Whether as stand-alone images or parts of larger printed series, prints construct and occupy alternative worlds and temporalities for encounters, exchanges, and open-ended conversations to take place. The recent gift of more than 120 early modern prints from Jeanine and Val Czubaroff to the Berman Museum serves as the anchor for this exhibition.
It was curated by Associate Professor Ashley D. West and graduate students Jessica Braum, Danielle Cooke, Natalie Cruz, Emma Holter, Rachael Reynolds, Samantha Rhodes, Brittany Rubin, Alexandra Schoolman, and Jessica Sternbach from the Art History program at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art & Architecture.
A virtual tour of Printmaking | Worldmaking is available online at ursinus.edu/berman, and West will present a curator tour on Monday, October 11, at 5:30 p.m.
A public opening reception for all the Berman’s current exhibitions will take place on Thursday, September 14, at 6 p.m.
Printmaking | Worldmaking is supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Also continuing or opening at the museum this fall:
JOSÉ ORTIZ-PAGÁN: UMBRAL
As the Berman Museum’s 2023 interdisciplinary artist-in-residence, Philadelphia-based Puerto Rican artist José Ortiz-Pagán engaged a cohort of Ursinus students to help research, conceive, and install a site-specific installation in the museum’s Baldeck/Hollis Gallery. Using a Pennsylvania-German “hex” from the Berman’s permanent collection as a point of departure, Ortiz-Pagán’s installation explores themes of “protection” and/or “blessing.” Together with participating students, the artist researched the etymology of these keywords to inform a thematic roadmap for the resulting work, focusing on crises afflicting the island of Puerto Rico and its people.
HEAVEN IS A LINE: ABSTRACT WORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION
This exhibition explores spirituality as a lens through which to view non-objective art. In conversation with José Ortiz-Pagán’s Umbral, in the adjacent gallery, Heaven is a Line considers abstraction as a language for expressing experiences outside the bounds of the physical or those that offer boundless connectedness, inner peace, or liberation. Abstraction, in its conception, abandoned artistic conventions for representing the observable world and offered freedom to pursue art that might provoke a regenerative effect on humanity. Here, you are invited to contemplate and meditate on abstract form as a vehicle for reflection.
JANET BIGGS: IMAGINATION AND DESIRE IN A NORTHERN LANDSCAPE
The Berman Museum is pleased to host this traveling exhibition, which presents three immersive videos highlighting the impact of climate change on the Arctic landscape. Through an interdisciplinary practice that includes video, film, photography, and performance art, Brooklyn-based artist Janet Biggs merges art and science to explore the relationship between humans and their environments. The exhibition’s videos—Warning Shot (2016), Brightness All Around (2011), and Fade to White (2010)—convey tensions related to identity, danger, and isolation in the expansive, vanishing landscape of the Arctic. Organized by The Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment.