Philadelphia: A Century in Print

Philadelphia: A Century in Print argues that the history of American printmaking cannot be fully understood without Philadelphia. While New York emerged as the nation's commercial art capital, Philadelphia became one of its most important centers for printmaking innovation—a city where artists, teachers, printers, and workshops continually expanded the possibilities of the medium.

Beginning in the 1930s, an extraordinary network of institutions—including the Graphic Sketch Club, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Works Progress Administration, The Print Club, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia College of Art, Moore College of Art & Design, the Brandywine Workshop, and countless independent studios—created an environment in which experimentation flourished. Here, technical discoveries were shared across generations, commercial printers collaborated with fine artists, and teachers inspired students who would become innovators in their own right.

The artists represented in this exhibition reveal a city that never embraced a single style or movement. Instead, Philadelphia fostered a culture of curiosity and invention. From the pioneering aquatints of Earl Horter and the revolutionary carborundum processes developed by Dox Thrash and his colleagues, to Benton Spruance's reinvention of color lithography, Stanley William Hayter's transformative postwar workshops, Eugene Feldman's experimental offset lithographs, and the interdisciplinary practices of contemporary artists, Philadelphia has repeatedly been a place where printmaking itself evolved.

The selection of works presented in this exhibition are milestones within a much larger story, one documented in the accompanying catalog of more than 150 prints. Together they trace an unbroken lineage of artists connected through mentorship, collaboration, and technical innovation, demonstrating that Philadelphia's greatest contribution to American art is not a single movement or generation, but a century-long tradition of redefining what printmaking can be.