DISTINGUISHED SPEAKER SERIES: Shelley R. Langdale
From Shower Stalls to Gallery Walls: The History of the Screenprint
Sunday, November 23, 1 p.m.
Join us for these special presentations by curators, authors, artists, and arts professionals. Seating space is limited so advance reservations are strongly suggested.
Silkscreen printing was a dominant medium in American Pop Art of the 1960s and is currently enjoying a wide range of applications in contemporary art today. Less well known is the history of the artistic screenprint from its birth in the federally funded print and poster workshops of the Works Progress Administration of 1930s through the Abstract Expressionist–dominated 1950s. This presentation provides an overview of that development from its “popular” commercial origins in the mass-production techniques of the early decades of the 1900s, through its depression-era struggle for artistic legitimacy and continued associations with commerce, to the coming of age of artistic screenprint production in the Pop Art 1960s and absorption into the multimedia orientation of printmaking today.
Shelley R. Langdale, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Philadelphia Museum of Art, received her M.A. in Art History from Williams College and worked at the Fogg Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Recently she was on the curatorial team of the international contemporary art festival Philagrafika 2010 held throughout the city of Philadelphia. She is the Vice President of the Print Council of America and is on the board and serves as Chair of Program Committee at the Print Center in Philadelphia. Previously she served on the board of the Lower East Side Printshop in New York, and she has juried numerous exhibitions across the country.