Exhibitions
PAPER BACKS: HIDDEN STORIES OF EUROPEAN PRINTS FROM THE VUMA COLLECTION
Vanderbilt University Museum of Art / 1220 21st Ave S. September 2 - December 7th
Many physical traces are left on prints as they travel across time and space. How were interventions such as stamped collectors’ marks, offhand doodles, and improvised matting used to reflect and refine collectors’ identities and, in the case of artist-collectors, to inform creative practices? Paper Backs: Hidden Stories of European Prints from Vanderbilt University Museum of Art Collection explores these questions by focusing on both the fronts and backs of prints, revealing aspects of works on paper rarely seen by museumgoers.
Please join Vanderbilt University Museum of Art (VUMA) for a Virtual Symposium (Zoom) October 16, 12 pm CST / 1pm EST.
RSVP for the Symposium at http://vu.edu/paperbackstories
Staged in conjunction with the Vanderbilt University Museum of Art’s Fall 2025 exhibition Paper Backs: Hidden Stories of European Prints from the VUMA Collection, this virtual symposium will bring together curators who oversee collections of European prints at museums spread across the South.
Each curator will give a lightning-style, 10-minute presentation about their museum’s pre-1915 European print holdings, with the goal of making these collections better-known amongst local, regional, and global audiences of both amateurs and professionals.
The symposium also seeks to initiate a collective discussion about how and why European prints often served as catalysts for the formation of institutional art collections in a region with limited public art infrastructure before the turn of the twentieth century. How did old master and early modernist European prints in particular support various progressive and post-World War I- era agendas? What challenges and opportunities face the study and promotion of such objects in the South today?
Participants:
Dr. Sarah Cartwright
Chief Curator and Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Florida State University, Sarasota, FL
Dr. Dana E. Cowen
Sheldon Peck Curator for European and American Art before 1950, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
Dr. Maggie Crosland
The Fariss Gambrill Lynn and Henry Sharpe Lynn Curator of European Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
Dr. Nelda Damiano
Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, Georgia Museum, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Dr. Alyssa M. Hughes
Works on Paper Specialist for the Frank Raysor Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Dr. Courtney Wilder
Sullivan Collection Curator, Vanderbilt University Museum of Art, Nashville, TN
Image: Detail of Coronation of the Virgin Mary with Augustine and William of Revaulx, by Carlo Cesio after Giovanni Lanfranco, c. 1650-1680. Etching.Gift of Mary Mildred and George H. Sullivan, transferred from the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2007)
