Out of the Box: 20th-Century Print Portfolios

March 30–June 23, 2002

This exhibition examines the portfolio as a vital format in twentieth-century European and American printmaking. Conceived, produced, and housed together, often in custom-made boxes, prints in portfolios share similar formal or thematic elements. Eleven complete print portfolios from the collection provide visitors with a rare opportunity to see the creative statement of each featured artist in its entirety. The two earliest portfolios on view are El Lissitzky’s Victory Over the Sun (1923) and Man Ray’s Revolving Doors (1926), followed by Jackson Pollock’s Portfolio of Six Prints (1951). The popularity of the portfolio format greatly increased after the late 1950s, when professional print workshops such as Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) and Tamarind Lithography Workshop opened in the United States. Out of the Box includes portfolios from this later period by Barbara Kruger, Gerhard Richter, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Some of the suites, such as Takashi Murakami’s And Then, and then, and then, and then, and then (1999), are exhibited for the first time.