National Museum of Asian Art Announces “Do Ho Suh: Public Figures”

First New Sculpture To Be Displayed Outside the Museum in Three Decades, Ushering in Museum’s Second Century

“The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art presents “Do Ho Suh: Public Figures,” a sculpture by contemporary Korean artist Do Ho Suh commissioned to celebrate the museum’s 100th anniversary. The monumental plinth will be unveiled April 27 and installed on the museum’s Freer Plaza for five years, facing the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

First presented as part of Public Art Fund’s 1998 exhibition “Beyond the Monument” (Brooklyn, New York), “Public Figures” challenges the notion of heroic individualism and the stability of national narratives. For the work, Suh created a plinth for a monument; however, its imposing form is not a base to support a heroic figure or to mark a particular historic event, but rather a massive weight held aloft by many small, individualized figures caught in mid-stride. Prominently placed in the center of the United States capital where it will be visible to some of the 25 million visitors to the National Mall each year, the commission dovetails with the global movement to rethink the role of the monument.

The unveiling of “Public Figures” marks the culmination of the National Museum of Asian Art’s centennial celebrations. In 2023, the museum honored its 100th anniversary with a yearlong series of events and programs that deepened public understanding of Asian art and cultures and their intersections with America. Ushering in the museum’s second century, this will be the first new sculpture to be displayed in front of the building in over three decades.”

Read more about the exhibition here!

Image Credit: Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul and London.

Akunyili Crosby featured in National Gallery Exhibition

The exhibition titled The Time is Always Now - Artists Reframe the Black Figure curated by writer Ekow Eshun, showcases the work of contemporary artists from the African diaspora, including Michael Armitage, Lubaina Himid, Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, and Amy Sherald, and highlights the use of figures to illuminate the richness and complexity of Black life. As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced.

The exhibition features the work of leading artists including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Hurvin Anderson, Michael Armitage, Jordan Casteel, Noah Davis, Godfried Donkor, Kimathi Donkor, Denzil Forrester, Lubaina Himid, Claudette Johnson, Titus Kaphar, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili, Jennifer Packer, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Thomas J Price, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor and Barbara Walker.

The Time is Always Now - Artists Reframe the Black Figure is on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London from February 22 - May19, 2024.

Read more about the exhibition here!

Dyani White Hawk in Coversation at the Denver Art Museum

As part of the Logan Lecture Series, Rory Padeken, Vicki and Kent Logan Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Denver Art Museum, engages with Dyani White Hawk about her dynamic practice of bringing Indigenous traditions of abstraction into a contemporary context.

This lecture is presented jointly by the departments of Modern and Contemporary Art and Native Arts and will take place on February 27th, 2024 from 6-7pm at the Denver Art Museum.

View the recorded lecture here!

Willie Cole's Five Beauties featured in National Academy of Design Sites of Impermanence

The National Academy of Design exhibition Sites of Impermanence is an exhibition of art and architectural works by the recently elected 2023 National Academicians Alice Adams, Sanford Biggers, Willie Cole, Torkwase Dyson, Richard Gluckman, Carlos Jiménez, Mel Kendrick, and Sarah Oppenheimer.

Although disparate in their approaches to material and subject matter, the artists and architects featured in Sites of Impermanence form a vivid cross-section of responses to urgent contemporary conditions and the underlying histories that have shaped them. From site-specific projects to sculpture, drawing, architecture, textile, and interactive installation, the selection of works in the exhibition reflects on a bounty of ideas (critical environmental challenges, the ongoing effects of slavery, the blurred lines between human and machine), to chart pathways towards transformation and liberation. Sites of Impermanence is co-curated by Sara Reisman, Chief Curator, and Natalia Viera Salgado, Associate Curator.

Sites of Impermanence is on view at the National Academy of Design in NY from February 8, 2024 - May 11, 2024.

Read more about the exhibition here!

Delita Martin Retrospective at U of Texas at San Antonio

This solo exhibition titled, Delita Martin: Her Temple of Everyday Familiars, A Retrospective, features the work of Delita Martin, a world-renowned master printmaker known for creating representations of black women in complex and luxuriant narrative portraits. These images draw in viewers to experience unexpected and evocative perspectives and the majesty in the often-hidden spirits of the everyday. This exhibition features a retrospective of the artist’s career including works produced in her adolescence, an interactive installation, and recent work.

Curated by Aissatou Sidime-Blanton .

The exhibition is on view at the Russell Hill Rogers Galleries at the University of Texas at San Antonio from January 26 - March 22, 2024.

Read more about the exhibition here!

Images by Patrick Buckner Photography.

Marking Resilience: Indigenous North American Prints at MFA Boston

Check out this exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston! Marking Resilience: Indigenous North American Prints is on view from November 4, 2023 through March 17, 2024 and features Highpoint Editions work by Dyani White Hawk, Julie Buffalohead, and Andrea Carlson!

Resilience often manifests in work by Indigenous North American artists, for example in its content or simply by increasing visibility to combat erasure in representation. Some Native artists have used the collaborative medium of printmaking as a way of reclaiming their histories and addressing the challenges their communities face today.

Check out MFA Boston’s website for more information and additional programming.

Highpoint Editions at INK Miami 2023

Highpoint Editions visits INK Miami for the 2nd year!

Now celebrating its 16th year, the INK Miami Art Fair is unique among the satellite fairs during Miami Art Week as the premier fair for works on paper. Visiting INK is also free! From December 6th through December 10th, Highpoint Editions exhibited 13 artists at INK including Julie Mehretu, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Wille Cole, Andrea Carlson, Delita Martin, Jim Hodges, Carlos Amorales, Todd Norsten, Carter, Lisa Nankivil, Brad Kahlhamer, Michael Kareken, and Carolyn Swiszcz.

Just two blocks from Art Basel Miami, INK showcases work from 15 galleries and publishers in the historic Dorchester Hotel. Instead of traditional fair booths, exhibitors occupy the hotel’s suites - giving visitors a rare opportunity to imagine the work in their homes.

The fair was bustling with attendees this year and the resounding response was incredibly positive. Many visitors expressed their gratitude for this breath of fresh air and insisted it was their favorite fair during Miami Art Week!

Highpoint Editions Prints featured in Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation

Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation features contemporary art works which illuminate and reframe the boundaries of bodies and the environment. The artworks included in the exhibition span five decades, from 1970-2020, and are drawn together for how they creatively call attention to the impact and history of forced migrations, industrialization, global capitalism, and trauma on humans and the contemporary landscape.

Artists include Carlos Almarez, Carlos Amorales, Leonardo Drew, Joe Feddersen, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, James Lavadour, Nicola Lopez, Hung Liu, Julie Mehretu, Wendy Red Star, Alison Saar, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, Charles Wilbert White, Kehinde Wiley, and Terry Winters.

Featured prominently are Carlos Amorales’ four prints with Highpoint Editions titled Useless Wonder Maps 1-4.

Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation is on view from October 21, 2023 to April 07, 2024 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR.

Read more about the exhibition here!

Creative Capital 2024 Awards Granted to Highpoint Editions Artists

Congratulations to both Highpoint Editions Artists Andrea Carlson and Dyani White Hawk on their Creative Capital 2024 Awards!

Creative Capital announced their 2024 “Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact” Awards in Visual Arts and Film/Moving Image, totaling $2.5 million in grants to artists for the creation of 50 groundbreaking new works. Chosen via a democratic process of external peer review out of 5,600 applications, these 28 successful visual arts project proposals and 22 film/moving image project proposals, representing 54 artists in total, were awarded on the basis of their innovative new approaches to painting, drawing, sculpture, public art, video art, architecture and design, printmaking, installation, documentary film, experimental film, narrative film, and socially engaged forms. The Creative Capital Award provides each individual artist with unrestricted project funding up to $50,000, which can be drawn down over a multi-year period, bespoke professional development services, and community-building opportunities.

Read more about the Creative Capital Awards here!

White Hawk Named 2023 MacArthur Fellow

Dyani White Hawk is among four artists named 2023 MacArthur Fellows. Along with María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Raven Chacon, and Carolyn Lazard, the Shakopee, Minnesota–based White Hawk is honored along with 19 others for “applying individual creativity with global perspective, centering connections across generations and communities,” in the words of Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows program.

Images courtesy of John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Read more about the fellowship here!

On Njideka Akunyili Crosby's "The Beautyful Ones" May Have Arrived, by Jason Rosenfeld

Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s new print, “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived, represents her first foray into an area of artistic production that she has been considering for some time. It is both a statement of continuity with the subject matter and style that has dominated her painted work for over a decade, and a novel departure in terms of process and materials.

“The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived by Njideka Akunyili Crosby 2023 | Edition of 60 | 45-run screenprint on Rives BFK | Paper Size: 36 1/2” x 46” | Image Size: 29 7/8” x 39 7/8”

The design is related to an acrylics-and-transfer-on-paper painting from 2013 titled “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born” Might Not Hold True For Much Longer, now in the collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. At five and a half by seven feet, it was the precursor to a celebrated series of works, “The Beautyful Ones,” derived from the debut novel by Ayi Kwei Armah from 1968. Armah was born in Ghana in 1939, and his book centers on the challenges in the life of a working-class man in the weeks leading up to the coup against Kwame Nkrumah’s government in 1966. Akunyili Crosby’s continuing series, now encompassing eleven paintings, thus takes post-colonial Africa as its starting point, and presents frontal portraits of youthful relatives, friends, and herself in intricate interiors and complex clothing. This initial image from 2013 is different from the others in the body of work as the protagonist, the artist herself, is seen in profil perdu, and the viewer is left to imagine her state of mind. In both the present print and its painted inspiration, a woman sits on a rug next to a low table on which rests a variety of objects, including a kerosene lantern, bowls, and plates. There is a radiator to the left of her head, and a wall with a baseboard. She wears an Ankara dress and sports a distinctively threaded hairstyle.

Detail, “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived

The painting was produced in Akunyili Crosby’s signature method, through precise drawing, the use of acrylic paints, and a photo transfer technique. The latter entails transferring images sourced from the internet or photographs she has collected over many years that serve as a kind of personal lexicon in her pictures. Pictures from this image bank are laser printed onto sheets of paper, and these color photocopies are placed face down onto the final surface and rubbed with acetone, transferring the image onto the paper below. The result is then often given a whitewash to further cloud the transferred image and push it back into the illusionistic space of the picture. This is a kind of monoprinting, and its ghostly reversed effects are visible in the radiator, baseboard, rug, side of the dress, edge of the table and its legs. In a gesture with metaphysical resonance, Akunyili Crosby painted a still life on the tabletop based on objects she photographed in 2012 at her grandmother’s house in a countryside village outside the town of Enugu where the artist grew up. Photographs of these same objects are then transfer printed onto the side and legs of the table.

In adapting such a complex work for an autonomous print, Akunyili Crosby and master printer Cole Rogers of Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis needed to be both flexible in the process and rigorous in the determination of colors and textures. As a result, their collaboration has taken four years. Akunyili Crosby had been inspired by printmaking classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and then at Yale University, where she studied under Rochelle Feinstein. She was also greatly influenced by prints made by artists such as Kerry James Marshall and Julie Mehretu. Rogers had first seen Akunyili Crosby’s work in person in a show of five pictures titled I Still Face You at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis in 2013. The eventual collaboration has taken four years. Initially, Akunyili Crosby drew the intricate design onto a large lithographic limestone, sourced by Rogers from the stock of a deceased printmaker in New Mexico, who had probably procured it from the famed Solnhofen quarries in Germany. The plan was to employ a combination of oil-based lithography and water-based-ink screen printing, but in the end it was decided to scan the image printed from the stone, making forty-five screens from the scan, and employing an astounding forty-three specially mixed colors in the printing process. The result is printed on Rives BFK paper, the same support that Akunyili Crosby uses for her paintings. In the sections that approximate her trademark image-transfer work, a transparent grayish whitewash is applied to push the image into the perceived background. The radiator, for example, is printed using four different transparent colors to locate it in deeper space. Such intricacies of the process mitigate against the tendency for screen-printing to result in opaque and flat surfaces, and successfully convey the distinctive way Akunyili Crosby crafts her paintings, preserving their essence in this independent work.

Detail, “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived

In “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived, Akunyili Crosby amplifies elements of the source image while adding new details, such as the gold hoop earring and the four inverted glasses on the table. She made both feet visible including a big toe and heel, added a bit of the left arm, and turned the subject’s face to the right to make the slit of her eye and her high cheekbone visible. She also transformed the table from rectangular to circular to better harmonize with the round pooling of the dress on the rug, the table’s shadow, that earring, and the various round bowls and plates and lantern and glasses on the table. Most critically, she deleted the narrow threshold at the upper right and the continuation of the wall and baseboard, in favor of a suggestive void that begins mere inches from the sitter’s face.

The most complex element of the print is the sitter’s fabulous dress. This is in an Ankara style, employing traditional African patterns in a wax-based process on cotton that is itself, of course, a kind of printing. Based on a design from Boxing Kitten in Brooklyn, it is built of sections like puzzle pieces, a combination of many colors and various levels of transparency. The wavy patterns are echoed in the complex hairstyle derived from images of threaded hair by Nigerian photographer J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere (1930—2014), who began shooting these traditional looks in the 1960s. As with so much of Akunyili Crosby’s work, there is an architectonic quality to the dress and hair, signaling an awareness of the modernist design that marked the landscape of post-colonial Africa, especially the metropolitan Lagos of her youth. The artist’s works are often built on such design scaffolds; they combine with her beautiful drawing of faces and bodies and her challenging use of perspective to enliven the compositions and establish physical settings for the sitters’ mental musings.

Detail, “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived

In works such as “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived, Akunyili Crosby instills a sense of inner life into her figures who are presented in domestic environs that meld the Nigeria of her youth and the America of her maturity, and that literally bear their histories and culture—printed onto the metal of the radiator, the wood of the baseboard and table, the broad seams of a dress. These somewhat washed out visual sparklings press back into the depicted image but simultaneously and animatedly burst forward into the mind, in the forms of the hopes and dreams of the young sitter, who stares out into a light manilla-hued void, enveloped by the past but expectant and embracing of the future.

Jason Rosenfeld

Thank you to Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Cole Rogers, and Andre Keichian for their help in the writing of this essay.

Jason Rosenfeld, Ph.D., is Professor of Art History at Marymount Manhattan College, New York, and a Senior Writer and Editor-at-Large at The Brooklyn Rail. He is the co-author of a monograph on Cecily Brown (Phaidon, 2020). He was co-curator of the exhibition River Crossings at Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historical Site, in Catskill, New York, and Olana, in Hudson, New York (2015); co-curator of Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at Tate Britain, London, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, the Mori Arts Center Gallery, Tokyo, and the Palazzo Chiablese, Turin (2012-2014); and co-curator of John Everett Millais at Tate Britain, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Fukuoka, and the Bunkamura Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2007-2008). He is the author of the monograph on John Everett Millais (Phaidon, 2012).

View availability of the work here and for all inquiries, please email the Gallery Director, Alex Blaisdell, alex@highpointprintmaking.org

"The Beautyful Ones" May Have Arrived, new print by Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Highpoint Editions is proud to release a new screenprint by artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived. This ambitious 45-run screenprint represents the artist’s first print publication and the culmination of a four-year-long collaboration with Highpoint Editions.

“The Beautyful Ones” May Have Arrived
Nideka Akunyili Crosby, 2023
45-run Screenprint on Rives BFK
Paper Size: 36 1/2” x 46 inches”
Image Size: 29 7/8” x 39 7/8”
Edition of 60

About Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Drawing on art historical, political, and personal references, Njideka Akunyili Crosby creates densely layered figurative compositions that, precise in style, nonetheless conjure the complexity of contemporary experience. Akunyili Crosby was born in Nigeria, where she lived until the age of sixteen. In 1999 she moved to the United States, where she has remained since that time. Her cultural identity combines strong attachments to the country of her birth and to her adopted home, a hybrid identity that is reflected in her work.

On initial impression her work appears to focus on interiors or apparently everyday scenes and social gatherings. Many of Akunyili Crosby’s images feature figures — images of family and friends — in scenarios derived from familiar domestic experiences: eating, drinking, watching TV. Rarely do they meet the viewer’s gaze but seem bound up in moments of intimacy or reflection that are left open to interpretation. Ambiguities of narrative and gesture are underscored by a second wave of imagery, only truly discernible close-up.

Vibrantly patterned photo-collage areas are created from images derived from Nigerian pop culture and politics, including pictures of pop stars, models, and celebrities, as well as lawyers in white wigs and military dictators. Some of these images are from the artist’s archive of personal snapshots, magazines, and advertisements, while others are sourced from the internet. These elements present a compelling visual metaphor for the layers of personal memory and cultural history that inform and heighten the experience of the present.

While the artist’s formative years in Nigeria are a constant source of inspiration, Akunyili Crosby’s grounding in Western art history adds further layers of reference. Religious art, the intimism of Edouard Vuillard’s intoxicatingly patterned interiors, the academic tradition of portraiture and, in particular, still life painting become vehicles for delivering, Trojan horse-like, new possible meanings.

These are images necessarily complicated in order to counter generalizations about African or diasporic experience. Talking about her work, Akunyili Crosby notes, ‘In much the same way that inhabitants of formerly colonized countries select and invent from cultural features transmitted to them by the dominant or metropolitan colonizers, I extrapolate from my training in Western painting to invent a new visual language that represents my experience — which at times feels paradoxically fractured and whole — as a cosmopolitan Nigerian.’

Njideka Akunyili Crosby was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1983 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She was awarded a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship and 2017 MacArthur Fellowship. Akunyili Crosby is the recipient of the 2020 Carnegie Corporation “Great Immigrant, Great American” Award; the 2019 African Art Award; the 2017 Future Generation Art Prize Shortlist; the 2016 Prix Canson Prize; the 2015 Foreign Policy’s Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2015 Prize; the 2015 Next Generation Prize, New Museum of Contemporary Art; the 2015 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and the 2014 Smithsonian American Art Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Art Prize. She was named one of the Financial Times’ Women of the Year in 2016.

Akunyili Crosby’s work is in the collections of major museums including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, The Norton Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Tate, Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and Zeitz MOCAA.

Pricing and availability can be found here, or you may contact Gallery Director, Alex Blaisdell alex@highpointprintmaking.org

FOR FURTHER READING, CLICK HERE FOR JASON ROSENFELD’S ESSAY ON “THE BEAUTYFUL ONES” MAY HAVE ARRIVED.

Association of Print Scholars at Highpoint

Highpoint hosted a cohort of print historians, curators, and educators from the Association of Print Scholars for a workshop Funded by the Getty Research Institute in the Highpoint studio at the end of July. Participants came to Minneapolis from all over the United States, along with two others who traveled internationally for the workshop, one from Montreal and another from Basel, Switzerland. Cole Rogers and Josh Bindewald provided a thorough, technically-focused, and participatory walkthrough of intaglio printmaking. Participants were able to create two images on copper plates using the techniques of drypoint, engraving, line etch, aquatint, and spit-bite. They were also guided through the process of making prints from their plates. Cole and Josh also demonstrated additional advanced intaglio techniques, including sugar lift, soft ground, chine-collé, and multiple plate printing. 

Amidst and between their studio sessions, the scholars viewed and discussed intaglio publications that Highpoint Editions has completed. They were also able to examine seminal historical prints during several visits to Mia. On their last day in the printshop, the scholars had the opportunity to apply their knowledge by identifying the techniques used in each other's prints and discussing what they had learned. The single greatest takeaway was their surprise at the level of skill needed to correctly wipe a plate, the scholars were emphatic about it!

The workshop was a long time in the works and took a great deal of planning. Originally it was to take place in the summer of 2020, but due to obvious circumstances, it was delayed. This was a case of good things worth waiting for, Josh said this about the workshop: “Teaching this group was so rewarding, their enthusiasm was palpable and contagious! All week long, they peppered us with intelligent questions and insights. It was just such a great experience all around.”

Thanks to the Association of Print Scholars for entrusting us to teach them intaglio and to engraving expert Todd Bridigum for helping introduce the ancient art of engraving to the group!

New Lithograph by Brad Kahlhamer

Highpoint Editions is proud to release the newest print by artist Brad Kahlhamer, ++HAWK+LITTLE HAWK++.

++HAWK+LITTLE HAWK++ by Brad Kahlhamer 2023 | Edition of 15 | Lithograph | Paper Size: 30 ½” x 25”; Image Size: 25” x 20”

Last summer, Highpoint Editions welcomed Brad Kahlhamer back to the professional shop to work on a series of watercolor monotypes and this lithograph edition of 15. Signed in May 2023, ++HAWK+LITTLE HAWK++ is now available for purchase.

This lithograph features a recurring character in Kahlhamer’s nearly 30-year career, the Hawk. The additional icons and themes in his work are born of a deliberate longtime practice – an almost life philosophy – of “yondering,” a term Kahlhamer coined to refer to his practice of nomadic wandering and pondering through his writing and drawing.

Brad Kahlhamer draws on his tripartite identity in his art, navigating his Native American heritage, adoptive German-American family, and adult life in New York City’s Lower East Side, where he has lived since 1990. In reference to his Native American history, Kahlhamer works with Hopi katsina dolls, but he deviates from their prescribed histories and uses, reimagining the dolls through a neo-expressionist lens and embellishing them with detritus collected from his neighborhood. Kahlhamer similarly combines established artistic traditions with his own history in his painting practice. The artist references hallmarks of 20th-century abstract painting, notably German expressionism and American neo-expressionism, while incorporating a highly personal iconography and absorbing the artistic milieu of downtown Manhattan.

Pricing and availability can be found here, or you may inquire with Highpoint’s Gallery Director Alex Blaisdell at alex@highpointprintmaking.org.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby Featured in New York Times

Highpoint Editions artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby was recently featured in a New York Times article titled “Njideka Akunyili Crosby Wants to Take it Slow, Despite Her Rapid Rise” following the opening of her solo exhibition at David Zwirner’s new Los Angeles location. Read the online article here.

Photograph of Njideka Akunyili Crosby by Erik Carter for The New York Times

Brad Kahlhamer at Nemeth Art Center

Highpoint Editions artist Brad Kahlhamer will be participating in the Nemeth Art Center’s first artist’s residency program and will be exhibiting work created during the program in a show on view at NAC in Park Rapids, MN from July 1 through October 1, 2023.

Opening & Artist Reception: July 1, 2023, 4:00 - 6:00PM

For more information and updates click here.

Morgan Solo Exhibition "Thought Notes" with Bockley Gallery

Highpoint Editions artist Morgan recently opened a solo exhibition with Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis.

“Welcoming his first engagement with Bockley Gallery, Morgan’s solo exhibition, Thought Notes, brings together a more recent selection of works (2006–2015) from his fifty-year career. As the title speaks to Morgan’s relation to and reverence for thought’s fragmentary, temporary, and hovering nature, it materializes his consistent studiousness with thought as a mark-making practice that embodies scripted and sonic notes on life.” - Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis

“Thought Notes” is on view from May 6 through June 17, 2023.

Learn more about the exhibition here.

Image ©Bockley Gallery.

Highpoint Editions at Expo Chicago 2023

Highpoint Editions visits EXPO Chicago for the Second Year

From April 13th through April 16th, Highpoint Editions exhibited at EXPO Chicago, a fine art fair taking place at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall in Chicago. This year’s 10th anniversary exposition featured over 170 exhibitors representing 36 countries and 90 cities from around the world. We exhibited recent works by Julie Mehretu, Delita Martin, Brad Kahlhamer, and Jim Hodges.

Over 32,000 visitors attended the fair this year and every interaction we encountered oozed with enthusiasm. People were back at the fair in full force and excited to view a wide range of work and engage in thoughtful discussions. While the huge selection of work may have felt overwhelming at first, every interaction was heart felt in intention and highlighted the tight-knit community of art lovers and enthusiasts that make this event a must attend.

Sarah Rose Sharp said it best in her article for Hyperallergic on this year’s fair: “One might go to an art fair anticipating spectacle, shenanigans, and eye-watering sales numbers, but the thing I found was much more heartening, and also deeply Midwestern: an environment of care, enabled by a deep work ethic and sincere enthusiasm for bringing art together with its audience.”

Co-Founder and Master Printer Cole Rogers celebrates 22+ years at Highpoint Center for Printmaking

Cole Rogers in the Highpoint Editions Print Shop by the ink wall

After an impressive twenty-two-year career at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Co-founder, Artistic Director, and Master Printer Cole Rogers has announced he is stepping down from his position at Highpoint. We offer Cole our support for his next steps, celebrate his influential career at Highpoint, and recognize his legacy in the greater printmaking field.

When we asked Cole if he is retiring, he said, “What’s that? I plan to collaborate with artists making prints and being an active community member.” As creatives, there is not quite a word to describe what it means to “retire,” but it’ll be a continuation of the craft. One thing's for certain, Cole Rogers's legacy in the printmaking community and the number of artists that have been impacted by his presence and expertise is incalculable.

See the Star Tribune Article here.  

As Cole departs, we celebrate his career and legacy. Since its opening in 2001, Cole has worked with over 50  international artists creating hundreds of prints and multiples from internationally known artists like MacArthur Fellows Julie Mehretu and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, to Do Ho Suh, Jim Hodges, to self-taught artist Donovan Durham. Highpoint Editions’ Print publications have been acquired for the permanent collections of over 70 major museums, corporations, and numerous private collections throughout the United States and abroad. Cole has been honored with ‘Printmaker of the Year awards from the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Mid-America Print Council and is a lifetime member of Southern Graphics Council International and Mid-America Print Council.

Highpoint was founded on the idea of bringing artists together to make prints, learn, explore, and find community through the medium of printmaking. In founding Highpoint, Cole and Carla have built a lasting hub for printmaking that includes members, artists, enthusiasts, collectors, students, neighbors, and families.

We are excited for Cole and Carla as they embark on their next chapter together and we know that they will continue to be honored members of Highpoint’s community for years to come. 

Cole Rogers printing ɹǝɯɯnS  ɟo  by Jim Hodges 2016

I am so grateful to have shared this adventure with many wonderful HP Board members, staff, interns, and co-op members, and tens of thousands of community members and stakeholders.  It has been an honor and privilege of a lifetime.
– Cole Rogers

Cole Rogers working with artist Dyani White Hawk on test proofs for her 2019 Takes Care of Them suite.

Having the opportunity to work with Cole was a gift. He is an incredible printmaker and human being. Having the opportunity to collaborate with someone with that level of expertise opens doors of possibility. My practice has benefited tremendously through the opportunity of creating prints through Highpoint Editions. I am but one of many people whose practices and lives have been enriched through participation in Cole and Carla’s vision of creating increased accessibility to printmaking. I am so proud of and grateful for, the work we created together as well as the lasting friendships that came through the experience of the beauty of collaboration.
– Artist Dyani White Hawk

Cole Rogers with artist Julie Mehretu who is signing her 2003 print Entropia (review).

Cole is one of the most talented and generous printmakers I’ve had the pleasure of working with. He embodies the full spirit of democratization of printmaking in the creation of Highpoint with the artists and students he has worked with over the years. He’s given an enormous gift to the community of Minneapolis.
– Artist Julie Mehretu

Cole Rogers artist Willie Cole while signing his 2012 Sole Sisters print.

Cole Rogers is a wonderful blend of patience, professionalism, and optimism. He cares and believes in the creative potential of both artists and ideas and that belief leads to amazing collaborations. Artists fall in love with potential. Cole Rogers, as the founder and Director of Highpoint, nurtures this potential through optimism, patience, and professionalism to help artists create amazing prints.
– Artist Willie Cole

Highpoint staff, Highpoint Editions artists and exhibition curator Dennis John at the opening night of The Contemporary print, 20 Years at Highpoint Editions.

We plan to honor Cole with a special event this summer and look forward to sharing details with you in the near future. 

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FULL PRESS RELEASE:

By: Carol Schuler

Highpoint Center for Printmaking’s Co-Founder Cole Rogers retires and celebrates
22+ years as Master Printer and Artistic Director

Highpoint Center for Printmaking Continues Successful Legacy

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (Apr. 18, 2023) – Co-founder, Artistic Director, and Master Printer Cole Rogers has announced his retirement from Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Established in 2001, Highpoint nurtures the art of printmaking by providing educational programs, community access, and collaborative publishing opportunities. 

Founded by Cole Rogers and Carla McGrath, Highpoint Center for Printmaking is recognized as the only community-based printmaking center of its caliber in the Upper Midwest. Executive Director Jehra Patrick will continue that vision for Highpoint to further the art of printmaking in exceptional ways.

“I am proud of the work Highpoint has done over the past two decades, born out of a first discussion and dream in August of 1997,” said Rogers. “I am so grateful to have shared this adventure with hundreds of accomplished artists, many wonderful Highpoint Board members, staff, interns, and co-op members, and tens of thousands of community members and stakeholders. It has been an honor and privilege of a lifetime. My time at Highpoint is ending, but I will continue printmaking and teaching as the future unfolds.” 

During his 20+ year tenure as Artistic Director and Master Printer of Highpoint, Rogers collaborated with scores of artists to cultivate their vision through printmaking. He guided Highpoint’s curatorial committee, led and facilitated artistic programming, managed printshop staff, and scouted and nurtured new talent for the Highpoint Editions visiting artist program. Rogers has collaborated with over 50 professional artists to create hundreds of prints and multiples: from internationally known artists like MacArthur Fellows Julie Mehretu and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, to Do Ho Suh, Jim Hodges, to self-taught artist Donovan Durham. 

 “Cole is a dedicated organizational leader, mentor, educator, and friend to many," said Highpoint Executive Director Jehra Patrick. “His deep love and commitment to printmaking has impacted our local community and is evident nationally. Together, Cole and Carla cultivated a thriving community of artists, learners, collectors, and enthusiasts brought together by printmaking — we are honored to steward this legacy of artistic and educational excellence into the future.”

“Artists fall in love with potential,” said artist Willie Cole. “Cole Rogers, as the founder and Director of Highpoint, nurtures this potential through optimism, patience, and professionalism to help artists create amazing prints.”

“I am so proud of and grateful for the work we created together as well as the lasting friendships that came through the experience of the beauty of collaboration,” said artist Dyani White Hawk. “I am but one of many people whose practices and lives have been enriched through participation in Cole and Carla’s vision of creating increased accessibility to printmaking.”

“Cole is one of the most talented and generous printmakers I’ve had the pleasure of working with,” said artist Julie Mehretu. “He embodies the full spirit of democratization of printmaking in the creation of Highpoint with the artists and students he has worked with over the years. He’s given an enormous gift to the community of Minneapolis.”

“In founding Highpoint, Cole Rogers and Carla McGrath created what is now one of the Twin Cities’ most vibrant and vital nonprofit art spaces,” said Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Visual Arts at the Walker Art Center, and a founding board member. “The professional print workshop is a haven for artists working in the medium – a place of perfect synergy where one’s vision can be realized through Cole’s technical collaboration and innovation at the highest level. I have yet to meet an artist he has worked with who has not been positively changed by the experience of working there.”

Highpoint is forming an executive search committee to identify the best possible successor. 

About Highpoint Center for Printmaking: 

Highpoint is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the art of printmaking. Its goals are to provide educational programs, community access, and collaborative publishing opportunities to engage the community and increase the appreciation and understanding of the printmaking arts. Highpoint Center for Printmaking offers a variety of programming including educational classes for kids, adults, and community members, a print shop co-op space that provides access to local artists to create work in a supportive workshop environment, a visiting artist program with national and international artists who can produce work with a master printer, creative residency, fellowship, and scholarship programs to support early career and professional artists, and a gallery space that is fully accessible to the public. Highpointprintmaking.org 

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