Aimé Maeght (1906–1981), founder of the famed Galerie Maeght in Paris (pronounced mahg), transformed the sale and promotion of modern art in post-war France. Among his innovations, he made fine print and book publishing an important artistic and promotional feature among the artists he represented. In 1946, the Galerie published the first volume of Derrière le miroir (Behind the Mirror), a beautifully designed modern art periodical that accompanied each of the Galerie’s exhibitions and included original prints, usually lithographs, by featured artists. Over the next thirty-five years, the Galerie produced 253 issues of Derrière le miroir. In addition to the fine prints, the publication included essays, poetry, and art criticism by leading contemporary writers. The issues were produced by Aimé and his son Adrien, both accomplished lithographers. Aimé and Adrien worked with the finest graphic workshops in France, including Imprimeurs Mourlot, to produce the early issues of Derrière le miroir.

This exhibition considers Symbolist and Surrealist prints from the museum’s collections of works on paper. It is curated by Dickinson College senior art history majors: Leah Barreras, Caitlin Barrett, Anna Elliott, Caitlin Faw, Louise Feder, Alex Geiger, Meg MacAvoy, Courtney Masters, Blair Thompson, and Amanda van Voorhees, under the direction of Melinda Schlitt.

The period between the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in November 1918 and Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power in January 1933 was one of great creative ferment in Germany. Expressionism, which had dominated the German avant-garde before World War I, survived into the early 1920s, merging with various newer trends. The Dada movement, founded in 1916 by a group of expatriate artists disgusted with the war effort, brought its free form iconoclasm to bear on the postwar German society. Dire social and economic circumstances seemed to demand a more pragmatic and realistic aesthetic, and by 1925 the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) was widely hailed as the principal mode of the decade. However, German artists in the 1920s were united less by a single style than by their overriding concern with humanitarian themes. Today, when contemporary artists are again turning to overtly political subjects, a look back at Weimar Germany offers a useful object lesson about the capabilities and limitations of socially motivated art. This exhibition features lithographs and etchings by a number of the leading artists in post-World War I Germany including Otto Dix, George Grosz, Lea Grundig, John Heartfield, and Käthe Kollwitz, as well as a number of political posters made during the years between the wars.

In 1951, Mrs. Josephine Linn made a gift of her collection of "contemporary" prints to what was then "The Dickinson College Art Gallery" as a memorial to her late husband, the Honorable William Bomberger Linn, an Associate Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The collection features a remarkable selection of works by American printmakers who were active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many of the prints are well known to visitors of The Trout Gallery from their inclusion in a variety of thematic exhibitions including Inked Impressions: Ellen Day Hale and the Painter-Etcher Movement (2007), 20th Century American Women Artists (1999), Trials and Triumphs: American Prints from the 1930s and 1940s (1991), and An American View: From the Country to the City (1988). Indeed, several generations of Dickinson art and art history graduates have worked with this important artistic resource. However, it is only when one surveys the entire gift of nearly 150 prints in the collection that one gains a fuller appreciation for Mr. and Mrs. Linn’s astute taste for American—notably women—printmakers. An Enduring Impression provides an introduction to the Linn Print Collection and pays homage to the foresight and generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Linn.

Voices features material by the leading exponents of the dynamism and originality of contemporary ceramic art in Sweden. Their work represents a renewal occurring in this medium during the past ten years that, not unlike other current craft movements, redefines ceramics as an art form used for freedom of expression, no longer as objects designed primarily for function. The exhibition is curated by Inger Molin, a major figure in the transformation of Swedish ceramics. Her selection includes works by artists from different generations and each with a vastly different style and point of view, creating an exhibition that reflects the diversity of Swedish ceramics created today. It features works by Frida Fjellman, Renata Francescon, Eva Hild, Pontus Lindvall, Mårten Medbo, AnnaSofia Mååg, Gustaf Nordenskiöld, Kjell Rylander, Per B Sundberg, and Kennet Williamsson.

Andy Warhol’s photographs were an essential aspect of the artist’s work and working methods. Although less well known than his advertising designs and paintings, photographs—by him or by others—were often the inspiration and the point of departure for much of his finished work. Warhol carried a camera everywhere and worked in several formats including 35mm roll cameras and various types of Polaroid instamatics. His photographs could be finished works, but often they function as source material for other projects, including paintings and screen-prints. This exhibition investigates aspects of Warhol’s approach to the media and draws from The Trout Gallery’s collection of more than 150 photographs by the artist, the recent gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Neil Prinz, co-editor of the multi-volume Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné.

The Dogon live in the central plateau region of Mali, West Africa, where they have resided since the fifteenth century. They settled along the cliffs of the Bandiagara after they encountered and displaced another ethnic group, the Tellem. Like many African cultures, the Dogon developed a system of beliefs to interpret their world, which is infused with the sacred power of ancestral and spiritual forces. The objects in this exhibition illustrate how the Dogon’s system of beliefs shapes the imagery associated with the essential facets of their life: religious rituals, social organization, ancestral worship, food production, and fertility.

A Kiowa’s Odyssey: A Sketchbook From Ft. Marion considers a 32-page book of drawings by the Kiowa warrior Etahdleuh Doanmoe, which chronicle the experience of seventy-two Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, and Caddo who were captured at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma in 1875 during uprisings associated with the Plains Wars. To stem further uprisings, the Indian prisoners were exiled to Ft. Marion, Florida, where, under the direction of Lt. Richard Henry Pratt, they were made to adopt Western values, appearance, behavior, language, and beliefs. Etahdleuh’s drawings illustrate the capture of the Indians, their passage to Florida, and their time at Fort Marion. The sketchbook is attributed to Etahdleuh Doanmoe (1854-1888), a mixed blood Kiowa-Mexican who was among the seventy-two detainees. The drawings were made at Ft. Marion in 1877, presumably for Pratt, who ultimately regarded Etahdleuh as one of his most successful students. While other sketchbooks and hundreds of individual sketches survive from Ft. Marion, this one is among a select group that Pratt kept and the only one to which Pratt added type-written captions that he composed. Pratt gave the sketchbook to his son Mason, who subsequently reorganized it into an album and supplemented it with a preface and photos of Etahdleuh. Thus, the sketchbook represents a layering of “voices” that span more than a century.