The Art Museums is one of many museums nationally and internationally to mark the 200th anniversary of the revolutionary printing process now called lithography. Since its invention in 1798 when it was called chemical printing from stone, lithography has developed in every imaginable direction. Commercially, lithography has been adapted to the production of everything from microchip wafers to barn-sized posters. Lithographs can be produced from photographs, and now from digitally captured images and computerized instructions compiled as bitmaps.

Le ballon by Edouard Manet, 1862. M13710.

Yet lithography has also remained a premier fine-art print process. Of all the printmaking techniques, only lithography has allowed the artist to use his or her accustomed tools and materialsæbrush and paint, pen and ink, crayon, paperæto make prints. The exhibition will celebrate the freedom lithography affords the artist and its capacity to record the autographic touch, whether expressed in drawn line or brushed tone, or quite literally through the fingerprint, even the mark of a kiss. Approximately eighty-five works will be on display in the Sackler's exhibition, including lithographs by Goya, Delacroix, Géricault, Manet, Degas, Kollwitz, Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Kirchner, Nolde, Ernst, de Kooning, Frankenthaler, Rauschenberg, Johns and Kelly.

RELATED EVENTS - ALL IN 1998
Gallery talks:
Saturday, August 29, 11:30 a.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
with Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints.

Saturday, September 12, 11:30 a.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
with Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints.

Sunday, October 25, 2:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum
with Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints.
More information on the following events will be available later this summer.

M. Victor Leventritt Lecture
Tuesday, October 6 at 6:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum lecture hall
Drawn to Print, with Pat Gilmour, visiting professor, University of East London.
Free admission. Complimentary parking will be available in the Broadway Garage at the corner of Felton Street and Broadway.

The M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Fund was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and greater Boston communities.

Lecture
Tuesday, October 13 at 6:00 p.m., Arthur M. Sackler Museum lecture hall
With Jerry Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints.
Free admission. Complimentary parking will be available in the Broadway Garage at the corner of Felton Street and Broadway.

Studio Visit
Tuesday, October 20, departs from Fogg Art Museum at 9:00 a.m.
Fox Graphics/Merrimac Editions, Merrimac, Massachusetts.
Herb Fox, Director, will conduct the visit from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. during which visitors will see demonstrations of different lithographic processes. Lunch will follow at a nearby restaurant in which Fox's lithographs are on display. Open to the public. A fee will be charged for this trip. Call the Friends, Fellows and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544 for more information and to register.

This exhibition Travelled to:
Agnes Etherington Art Center, Queens University, Kingston Ontario - September 30 through Decmber 10, 2000.

Ackland Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - February 18 through May 20, 2001.

Touchstone is organized by Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, who is also the author of the catalogue. See also Press Release and Exhibition Catalog.