Print Center New York presents A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and The Contemporaries, the first exhibition and publication to explore the understudied work and impact of Margaret Lowengrund (1902-57).
On view in the Jordan Schnitzer Gallery and co-curated by Christina Weyl and Lauren Rosenblum, A Model Workshop is focused on expanding histories of mid-century art in the United States, and specifically in New York City. Lowengrund was the first woman to open her own printmaking workshop in the United States; a visionary leader, organizer and critic within the mid-twentieth century New York printmaking community; and a driving force behind the revival of artistic lithography. The project is the first to cover Lowengrund and the nexus of mid-century printmaking she created in founding the vibrant New York print workshop and gallery, The Contemporaries. A Model Workshop brings together a diverse selection of objects, including 79 prints, one sculpture, and various ephemera, and unfolds chronologically via three themes through which the exhibition is structured: Lowengrund’s own printmaking and writing practices; the activity at The Contemporaries; and the workshop-gallery’s merger with New York’s Pratt Institute and transition into the Pratt Graphic Art Center (PGAC).
This first section showcases Lowengrund as a visionary and pioneer through the prism of her activity as an artist, teacher, organizer, and critic over her forty-year career. Through a selection of prints, Lowengrund is shown to be at the center of the print world for the entirety of her career, making cityscapes in New York and abroad during the 1920s, producing social viewpoint prints during the 1930s while employed in the Graphic Arts Division of the Federal Art Project-Works Progress Administration, teaching color lithography at the New School for Social Research (1938–40) and working as an illustrator for publications until the late 1940s. This artistic, academic, and commercial success all led Lowengrund to be the first woman in her field to open her own professional printmaking workshop in 1951.
A Model Workshop’s largest section demonstrates the breadth of activity that transpired at The Contemporaries in the Upper East Side, which reflected the vibrancy and growing internationalism of the mid-century printmaking world. Since its inception, The Contemporaries acted as a workshop as well as a gallery, showing prints made therein and building on current trends in contemporary printmaking. The Contemporaries organized eclectic and ambitious group shows and solo shows featuring exceptional printmakers such as Josef Albers, Warrington Colescott, Carol Summers, Corita Kent, Fayga Ostrower, and June Wayne. The space’s workshop drew an equally impressive roster of artists who taught (including Michael Ponce de León, Seong Moy, Will Barnet, and Andre Racz) or who collaborated on editions with this staff (Stuart Davis, David Smith). A Model Workshop captures the range in techniques and aesthetics of the artists associated with The Contemporaries in its initial years.
A smaller section of the exhibition demonstrates the further expansion of The Contemporaries’s ambition and global reach through the workshop’s 1956 merger with the Pratt Institute. Facing a cancer diagnosis and deteriorating health, Lowengrund looked to align The Contemporaries with a New York-based institution that could carry her vision forward. A vitrine of historical documentation, including the portfolio 11 Prints by 11 Printmakers (1961) and issues of two Pratt publications, illuminates The Contemporaries’ transition into the PGAC and reflects on Pratt’s sustained prominence as a center for global artistic and technical exchange in the field of printmaking.
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