America In Print

Post-War America Provided A Rich Artistic Landscape For Printmakers, And So Artists Began To Create Their Own Take On ‘The American Dream’. Alice Wright Looks At The Evolution Of The Medium In The Ever-changing USA.

As Donald Trump begins his reign as 45th President of the United States, there is heightened interest in America’s position in the world and what it means to be American. To this end, the timing of a major new exhibition exploring how printmaking flourished in the US during a period of great change seems particularly apt. The American Dream: pop to the present, opens at The British Museum this March, drawing on the museum’s extensive collection of prints, as well as important loans from institutions such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition features many American artists who embraced printmaking as the ideal medium to express America’s power and influence, and to address social issues.

The timing of the show is largely a coincidence, says its joint curator Catherine Daunt. But she notes a number of recent exhibitions across London focusing on American art, such as the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective at Tate Modern, suggesting “something in the air… maybe a feeling that it’s a transitional time”.

The show follows on from the museum’s 2008 exhibition, The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock, featuring work by American artists from the first half of the 20th century. Sensing an appetite for a subsequent exhibition focusing on the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century, Stephen Coppel, Catherine’s co-curator of The American Dream, has focused on building up the museum’s collection in that area. “About two thirds of the works in the show are from the British Museum’s collection,” says Catherine. “And about 100 of those are works that have been acquired by the British Museum since 2008. It’s been an intense period of building the collection.”