Gifted artists Donation ensures printmaking's future Archived article from Nov 4, 2002   By Sandra Lanman and Amy Vames The Target June Wayne 1951 In 1976, Judith Brodsky approached the editor of Art Journal, the publication of the College Art Association, about writing an article on women printmakers. The centerpiece of the article would be June Wayne, an internationally known California artist who reinvigorated printmaking in the United States in the 1960s at her famed Tamarind Lithography Workshop. "You couldn't become a printmaker without knowing who June Wayne was," says Brodsky, professor emerita and the founding director of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (RCIPP). With the journal editor's blessing, Brodsky contacted Wayne for an interview. That initial meeting developed into a longtime friendship between the two artists and, eventually, led to Wayne's decision to make a major donation of art work to the Mason Gross School of the Arts. The gift, valued at $5.47 million, is the largest ever bestowed on the school. Wayne has also committed to spending time at Rutgers each year. As a research professor, she will lecture, interact with students and create new work with the center's professional staff of printers, typographers and papermakers. June Wayne, says Brodsky, is one of the most important printmakers and lithographers of our time. "Without her vision and efforts, lithography might have died out in the United States. Now, she has bestowed the mantle of creative leadership in the print world on Rutgers. Her gift will make the RCIPP the premier printmaking center in the country." The gift June Wayne's gift to Rutgers includes a significant portion of her own work along with works by 128 other distinguished artists. RCIPP will also receive Wayne's collection of books, catalogs and other resources she has used throughout her career. Those materials will be used to set up the June Wayne Study Center and Archives. "The June Wayne collection adds further luster to the print center and visual arts department at Mason Gross," says George B. Stauffer, dean of the school. "Add to this Ms. Wayne's presence as a research professor, and it is clear that Rutgers will become a mecca for all those interested in modern printmaking and the visual arts." Wayne's gift comprises 3,321 works (2,555 by Wayne herself) plus four of her tapestries, and includes works by such artists as Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert DeNiro (father of the actor), Francoise Gilot, Elaine de Kooning, Matsumi Kanemitsu, Louise Nevelson, David Hare, Richard Haas, Robert Motherwell, Jose Luis Cuevas and Magda Abakanowicz. They represent painters and sculptors, as well as printmakers, who either created works at Tamarind or whose works reflect the techniques and qualities Wayne helped preserve and perfect. The donated works will be handled in different ways. A portion of them will constitute a permanent collection of Wayne's work at Rutgers' Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. The museum also will select works by other artists for its collection of American 20th-century prints. Another group will be retained for study by students, faculty and visiting artists and scholars at RCIPP. Some 200 prints will be offered for sale by Swann Auction Galleries of New York at a special auction Nov. 21 to benefit the center. On Nov. 19, Swann will host a symposium, benefit reception and preview in honor of Wayne. Additional sales of other works will take place in the future, according to Brodsky, who is coordinating the events. Brodsky has herself donated $500,000 to the RCIPP and will continue to raise additional funds for the center. Proceeds from the auction along with Brodsky's gift will help create an endowment to support the center's artistic and educational mission. The donations by Wayne and Brodsky are among the latest gifts to The Rutgers Campaign: Creating the Future Today. The campaign seeks to raise $500 million in private funding by June 30, 2004. As of Sept. 30, the university had secured nearly $444 million in campaign donations and pledges. The artists June Wayne In nearly 70 years as an artist, June Wayne has achieved legendary status for her multiple talents in areas ranging from art to film, and for her visionary leadership and activism on behalf of artists. But her greatest fame stems from her work in and influence on printmaking and fine-art lithography. In a book issued in France upon the 200th anniversary of lithography, "La Memoire Lithographique," the author, art historian and print curator Jorge de Sousa, highlighted just two artists representing 20th-century printmaking: Picasso and Wayne. He called Wayne "the incontestable pioneer of contemporary lithography." Since her first solo exhibition at age 17 in Chicago in 1935, Wayne has boldly explored a variety of media and aesthetic concepts. She was creating "optical art" long before it had a name and adapting Ben Day dots in her work decades ahead of Pop Art. She has bridged art and science with her 1970 series on the genetic code and through her explorations of molecular biology and quantum mechanics. Also a writer and producer, she was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 for "Four Stones for Kanemitsu," regarded as the leading documentary on the art of lithography. In the 1950s, when she could not find a fine-art lithographer in the United States with whom to collaborate, Wayne began traveling to Paris to have her work printed. Lithography involves the application of water and a greasy material to a stone. Ink is then applied to the stone; the ink washes off the wet areas but adheres to the greasy part and can then be transferred to paper to make a print. Her work attracted the notice of the Ford Foundation, which funded Wayne's plans for strengthening lithography in the United States. In 1959, she established the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles and set about refining and improving the way lithographs were made. In the process, she revived an art that was nearly extinct in this country. In its first decade, Tamarind artists working with Tamarind-trained printers created nearly 3,000 lithographs. In 1970, the workshop became the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico, where it still resides. Wayne also has given artists a voice through her activism, which dates to 1939, when she and other artists petitioned the federal government to continue the WPA's art projects. In the 1950s, she took on McCarthyism, and in the 1970s, she was a leader in the American women's movement in art. In 1990, she was a vocal advocate of government support for the endangered National Endowment for the Arts. Now 84, Wayne continues to live and work on the Los Angeles street that gave her lithography workshop its name. She remains a vital, vibrant force in the art world, and will continue to influence and inspire artists and students while at Rutgers. "June Wayne has had a tremendous impact on the art world and artists' issues," says Brodsky, who calls Wayne "a heroine of mine. When I established the RCIPP, my idea was to use her Tamarind Lithography Workshop as a model." Judith Brodsky In her own career, Judith Brodsky has been not only an inspiring professor and effective administrator, but also a renowned artist, political activist and national leader on behalf of women in the arts. The images in her work explore such themes as feminism, ageism and Jewish identity. She sees herself as an advocate for women, the economically disadvantaged and minorities of all kinds. By adeptly combining photographic with drawn images, humor with anger, she creates narrative series that make powerful statements on contemporary social themes. Brodsky was elected the first artist president of the Women's Caucus for Art in 1976. She created the Coalition of Women's Arts Organizations to lobby Congress on behalf of women in the arts. She was also president of the College Art Association and is currently national president of ArtTable Inc., an organization of women leaders in the visual arts. In 1986, she founded the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper and became its first director. More than 200 artists have been in residence since, including Leon Golub, Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, Joan Snyder and Pepon Osorio. Art created at the center has been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and museums throughout the United States and Europe. Brodsky notes that the fully professional center is unique in having visual arts students work alongside visiting artists and master printers as interns and assistants. The center's facilities comprise five studios in downtown New Brunswick. The director is Lynne Allen, professor of visual arts and former education director at the Tamarind Institute. Eileen Foti, who holds a Tamarind Master Printer Certificate, is master printer and manager of the print shop. Anne McKeown is the papermaker and manages the papermaking shop. The center has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, New Jersey State Council on the Arts and such private sources as Johnson & Johnson. The center also has an ongoing relationship with a print shop serving black artists in South Africa and has helped villagers in a remote area of Ecuador establish a cottage industry manufacturing handmade paper from native sisal fiber. The importance of printmaking continues to grow, Brodsky says. "It is a particularly pertinent art form right now. It's fascinating because it can absorb the technology that continues to be developed, yet maintains the individuality of the artist." Printmakers are taking full advantage of the latest digital technology and, in turn, are influencing the way the technology is evolving, Brodsky notes. "June Wayne's gift will enable the center to continue as an agent for change by remaining responsive to leading-edge ideas in the art world," she says.

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