Drawn Together: Collections in Conversation, opening October 19, brings together curators from three institutions reconsidering the old arrangement that kept prints and drawings in a curatorial basement. Claire Spadafora Baes of LACMA, Jun Nakamura of the Princeton University Art Museum, and James Wehn of the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison each have recently finished renovations or collection rehangs, giving them a chance to question whether prints and drawings should stay apart by medium or sit among paintings and sculpture arranged by period, geography, or theme.
The exhibition marks a shift for an organization that long operated as an exclusive group for print dealers and publishers. Founded in 1987, the IFPDA only this year broadened its charter to embrace drawings, the first alteration to that charter since the organization’s founding. Its signature public initiative has been relabeled from Print Month to Prints & Drawings Month, with sessions focused on drawings now joining the prints scholarship that has formed the core of the series for seven years.
Marie Bracquemond Session
One session turns to Marie Bracquemond, one of just three women who exhibited with the Impressionists under her own name. Her drawings were long overshadowed by her husband Félix, a far more prolific etcher. Now the session gives Bracquemond’s work the spotlight it has often lacked.
Volcxken Diericx Study Day
Another session focuses on Volcxken Diericx, a woman who ran a major publishing operation in a field where the story is typically told through its male masters. The study day covers Southern Netherlandish workshop practice from 1570 to 1670, placing Diericx’s work within that broader context.
The Rembrandt Pairing
The season’s marquee event splits attention between the Morgan and Florida’s Naples Art Institute, framing Rembrandt’s printmaking as inseparable from his painted output. That pairing treats his prints as central to his artistic project.
The Line-Up’s Message
The combined lineup at IFPDA’s Prints & Drawings Month argues against the established hierarchy of art history and its display. It urges museums to abandon the separate treatment of works on paper and instead integrate them into galleries organized by period, geography, or theme.
Why This Matters Now
These rehangs at LACMA, Princeton, and Wisconsin-Madison do not stand alone. They reflect a wider change in how museums display their holdings.
What to Watch
The October sessions let visitors see this way of looking at art in action. Two sessions focus on women whose work has been overlooked because of male artists: the Bracquemond session and the Diericx study day. A third pairing reframes Rembrandt’s printmaking as central to his entire body of work.
| Session | Focus |
|---|---|
| Marie Bracquemond | One of three women who exhibited with the Impressionists under her own name |
| Volcxken Diericx | A woman running a major print publishing operation, 1570 to 1670 |
| Rembrandt pairing | Splitting attention between the Morgan and Florida’s Naples Art Institute |
The Verdict
IFPDA’s October Prints & Drawings Month program makes a quiet but strong case for reconsidering where prints and drawings sit within museums. Its sessions on Bracquemond, Diericx, and Rembrandt show how that questioning plays out in practice, as the institutions hosting them push back against a hierarchy that has held for more than a century.
Anyone with an interest in prints and drawings would do well to keep a close eye on the October lineup.
Source material: “At IFPDA’s October Prints & Drawings Month, Museums Are Quietly Rethinking Where Works on Paper Belong,” Hyperallergic.
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