Framing a Decade: Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings, 2001–2011

It is inspiring to see what can be accomplished in a decade. And the approaching ten-year anniversary of the Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion provided the perfect opportunity to look at the prints, drawings, and artists’ books acquired for the Museum’s Collection in that time. Framing a Decade highlights those works that are among the finest and most rare, from a selection of nearly three thousand that are new to the prints and drawings collection since 2001. This exhibition, in turn, is a celebration of not only the artwork acquired, but also the donors and Members who helped make the acquisitions possible through gifts and bequests.

Framing a Decade spans over four centuries of graphic achievement in Europe and North America, and has three main areas of concentration: Old Masters, nineteenth and early twentieth century, and contemporary art. Among the artists represented are Old Master artists Jacques Callot, Claude Mellan, and Rembrandt van Rijn; nineteenth-century French artists Félix-Hilaire Buhot, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Rivière and twentieth-century German artists Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Gustav Klimt; and contemporary artists Leslie Dill, Sol LeWitt, and Terry Winters. The breadth of the exhibition provides rich viewing and an invigorating trip through time.