THE British Museum's Quest for Variety
Recent Print Acquisitions selected by the Curators: Catherine Daunt
Catherine Daunt is Hamish Parker Curator of Modern and Contemporary Graphic Art
George W. Bellows Benediction in Georgia
This dark, oppressive print makes a powerful statement about the role of religion in American prisons. Appearing dejected and disengaged, the prisoners are hunched and crumpled under the weight of the preacher’s outstretched arms. In May 1917, the image was reproduced in The Masses, a radical publication to which Bellows frequently contributed. A century later, we purchased this wonderfully rich impression from Swann Auction Galleries, New York, with funds from the Friends of Prints and Drawings.
Emma Amos American Girl
Emma Amos’s self-portrait presents an alternative to the prevailing image of an all-American girl. In the 1960s, Amos was a member of Spiral, a collective of Black artists, and later she joined the Guerrilla Girls. She made this etching at a politically charged time, when the women’s liberation and Black Power movements were at their height. It was produced by Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, New York and included in Impressions: Our World, Vol. I, a portfolio comprising prints by seven Black artists. It is one of four prints by Amos that we have acquired for the Museum over the last six years. We purchased it from the Ryan Lee Gallery, New York in 2019, with funds generously provided by our long-standing American patrons, Margaret Conklin and David Sabel.
Richard Bosman Mutiny
This dramatic colour woodcut relates closely to another in the collection, South Seas Kiss, which we included in our 2017 exhibition The American Dream: pop to the present. Both are from a group of colour woodcuts that Bosman made with the printers Chip Elwell and Ted Warner in 1980-1. In South Seas Kiss, the naval captain can be seen kissing a naked woman, apparently on the same moonlit evening. Could his assassination be related to this earlier romantic encounter? We purchased this print from Brooke Alexander, New York, with funds from the Vollard Group, a group of patrons who support the Museum’s acquisition of modern and contemporary graphic art.