MoMA's Excellent Print Show Celebrates Circulation

For years, the department of Prints and Illustrated Books at New York's Museum of Modern Art has expanded the limits of its ostensible specialization. Under the tenure of Deborah Wye in the 1990s and continuing with current head Christophe Cherix, who arrived in 2007, the department has assiduously sought out all manner of print-related works, not only limited editions and deluxe livres d'artistes but ephemera, installations, discrete objects and mass editions.

Three times since 1980—roughly every decade-and-a-half—the department has taken stock of developments in prints, mounting a large exhibition of works drawn mainly, though not exclusively, from its collections. The current survey "Print/Out," curated by Cherix, who was assisted by Kim Conaty, and installed on the sixth floor, takes an ambitious approach to what have been seismic changes in recent years, not least due to burgeoning technologies. "The idea was to show that the medium is not fixed, that it does not present just one story," says Cherix, who aims with his exhibition to address not only the objecthood of prints, but the notion of dissemination inherent to the medium. "These artists are operating all over the world; there is no center any more. And the new technologies they have integrated make the work more apt to be spread instantaneously, rather than following traditional routes of distribution."
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