Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

1913 - 1914

Library

1915 - 1935

Department (or Division) of Prints [and Library]

1936 - 1937

Division of Prints and Drawings

1938 - 1993

Department of Prints and Drawings

1994 - 2006

Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

Susan A. Hutchinson

Curator of Books 1904 - 1910; Librarian 1911 - 1914; Librarian and Curator of Prints 1915 – 10/1/1935

Carl O. Schniewind

Librarian and Curator 10/1/1935 - 3/15/1940

Una E. Johnson

Assistant 1936 - 1939; Assistant Curator 1940 - 1941; Curator 1941-1969; Curator Emeritus 1972 - 1996

Eileen Jo Miller

Research Assistant 10/1961 - 1/1963; Assistant Curator 1/21/1963 - 2/1969; Curator 2/1969 - 6/27/1975

Nancy Tousley

Research Assistant 9/28/1970 - 12/31/1970; Mellon Fellow 1/1/1973 - 1/31/1973; Assistant Curator 2/1/1973 - 4/11/1975

Gene Baro

Consulting Curator 1977 - 11/1982

Ripley Albright

Assistant Curator 9/1/1977 - 1/1981

Barry Walker

Assistant Curator 1/1981 - 11/1983; Associate Curator 11/1983 -1991

Charlotta Kotik

Consulting Curator 1983 - 1984; Curator 1984 - 1985

Karyn Zieve

Intern 4/1987 - 6/1989; Assistant Curator 7/1/1989 - 12/1993

Linda Konheim-Kramer

Curator 9/1985 -2/1994

Barbara Head Millstein

Associate Curator 3/6/1998 - 1/14/2004

Marilyn Kushner

Curator 10/1994 - 12/2006

In 1913, Brooklyn Museum librarian Susan A. Hutchinson reported the Museum's decision to actively collect prints. Although she announced this new policy with some hesitation, the Museum moved quickly to accommodate a curatorial division and print collection: During the year the Museum has been brought face to face with the question as to whether or not it shall collect prints, and has decided in the affirmative, and also that the library shall have charge of them; the latter is in accordance with the best Museum usage, although there is always a question as to just where prints belong in a Museum.

The Museum's determination to develop a curatorial division and a collection of works on paper at a time when such a move was considered experimental helped shape the direction of the department for its first half-century. There was a concerted effort by the Museum and curatorial staff to educate the public about the value of these objects as works of art and to foster the careers of artists. The department also started an active program of exhibitions and acquisitions that continues today.

The Museum began collecting works on paper even before the department's official establishment. By 1913, the collection already consisted of 1,967 black and white prints, miscellaneous prints by George H. Sullivan, four portraits of botanists presented by Mrs. N. L. Britton, two hundred book plates, five hundred fifty-four prints, and over 1,000 pieces of illustrative material, which included magazine excerpts. One year later Samuel P. Avery presented to the library two hundred thirty-nine autograph letters of artists, including photographs.

In addition to assigning curatorial responsibilities to Susan Hutchinson in 1913, the Museum established a print gallery in the corridor leading to the library. In that same year, Hutchinson installed the first exhibition of etchings, loaned by Mr. H. L. Quick.

In an effort to educate Museum patrons and staff about prints and to encourage interest in this art form, Hutchinson curated exhibitions of print processes featuring tools, plates, blocks, and prints. Print processes exhibits were installed regularly for many years. A print laboratory was also opened to the public in December 1914. On the opening day, artist and etcher Hugh M. Eaton demonstrated and explained how prints are made. In that same year, Hutchinson recommended the purchase of a press for the printing of etchings in order to be used by the public and to encourage artistic work.

The formal opening of the print department was held on April 26, 1915, on the occasion of an exhibition of the Richard A. Canfield collection of Whistler lithographs, which the Rembrandt Club of Brooklyn presented to the Museum. The newly formed print committee also met a few weeks later to decide upon the development and direction of the print department. It became quite apparent to Hutchinson that print department activities would take much time from library staff: The activities of the Print Department during 1916, the second year of its existence, have been so many and varied that an adequate clerical staff must be forthcoming if the Department is to fulfill its possibilities to the community.

Hutchinson began writing and lecturing extensively on works on paper, while also focusing on acquisitions and exhibitions to attract public attention and support. Gifts included five etchings by James McNeill Whistler from A. Augustus Healy. The Museum also purchased one hundred twenty-eight wood engravings of subjects by the late J. H. E. Whitney. Samuel P. Avery donated fifty French wood engravings, most of them by Alfred and Fanny Prunaire.

Due in part to the efforts of Hutchinson, the Brooklyn Society of Etchers was formed in 1916. During that year, the Museum hosted the first of the Society's annual exhibitions. More than 3,500 visitors attended and the Society donated to the Museum the etching Girl Seated by Mary Cassatt. In the summer of 1916, special racks for storing framed pictures were placed in one of the print storage.

During World War I, Hutchinson curated three timely exhibitions, an exhibit of war posters; an exhibition of sixty-six lithographs by Frank Brangwyn, Muirhead Bone, Charles Shannon, and Edmund Dulac, among others, showing various phases of British war activities; and an exhibition of Joseph Pennell lithographs of war-related themes. The Museum purchased the American series of lithographs from the Pennell exhibition for the collection. The director noted that "in spite of war, the interest in prints in Brooklyn grows, as evidenced by the attendance and especially by the return of visitors for a second inspection of an exhibition."

In 1919, Hutchinson acquired two important gifts. Alfred T. White donated a collection of bibles dating from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries and a bequest of illuminated manuscripts, autographed letters and documents were received from the estate of Mary Benson of Brooklyn. This bequest brought the total of the Museum's autograph collection to nearly 2,500, including the Avery donation and the John M. Burt collection. In 1921, Samuel P. Avery donated etchings from such artists as Rembrandt, Turner, Corot, and Millet.

Influenced partly by the growing number of museum print departments, an expanding print collection at the Brooklyn Museum, and increased attendance in the print gallery, Museum Director William Henry Fox encouraged a more vibrant and dynamic approach to the activities of the department. This new approach included better communication and sharing with other institutions. In Fox’s report for 1925, he remarked that one of the "outstanding events of the year, [was the] inauguration of a policy of assembling an occasional exhibition for circuit to other museums after being shown here, and a survey of the print departments of the museums west of Washington by the curator of prints." For better control over the growing collection, the department began working on a card catalogue of the print collection in 1928. The cataloguing and classification of prints would be by categories, such as process, country, century, and organized alphabetically by print maker.

The efforts to encourage the work of artists and to educate the public on printing methods and techniques continued. In the 1930s, the department initiated a Sunday afternoon "print round table" series, to examine and discuss prints. There were also classes in block printing and etching, which took place in the print laboratory. In 1931 the department produced a motion picture: The Making of an Etching showing Frank W. Benson at work. Hutchinson also spoke on WNYC radio in 1932 regarding, How to Look at an Etching. And, in addition to the print department's etching and lithographic presses, which had been installed in the print laboratory some years earlier, the Museum acquired a wood block press to be used by students and professional artists. Fox commented that "it is regarded by the artists as a great privilege to use these presses without cost. From time to time teachers of etching have brought classes for demonstration and to examine the collections."

In 1931, a notable gift of sixteen Rembrandt etchings came in from Mr. and Mrs. William A. Putnam. According to Hutchinson, "this gift is not only the most important one of the year but the most important one that has ever come to the Print Department." During this year, as well, a print study room opened and metal cases for prints were installed.

Carl O. Schniewind was appointed librarian and curator upon Susan Hutchinson's retirement on October 1, 1935. While Hutchinson had focused on collecting prints by contemporary American and English artists, Schniewind concentrated on French prints from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, purchasing prints by Henri Matisse, Odilon Redon and Toulouse-Lautrec. He also enhanced the collection through the acquisition of important German, Dutch, and Italian prints. During his tenure, he exhibited many of these works on paper. Among his exhibitions were Etchings and Lithographs by Henri Matisse (1935), Gauguin Prints and Drawings (1938), and Lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec and His Friends (1938).

Between 1935 and 1937, the collection, print room and galleries were closed for renovation. As part of this project, all prints were reviewed, restored, and supplied with new, descriptive labels. The drawing collection, which was turned over to the print department in May 1936, was also reviewed and the entire collection was rematted by WPA staff. At its reopening in 1937, the print department consisted of three rooms, including a storeroom, cataloguing room, and a gallery.

In the spring of 1937, Mrs. William A. Putnam gave the Museum a contribution for the print study room, which was named the William A. Putnam Memorial Print Room. Formally opened on October 15, it was “one of the most modern and best equipped print rooms in the country. The new stacks will hold about 6,200 prints and drawings and for the first time in its many years of public service the Brooklyn Museum has a fully equipped print study room."

In 1937, assistant Una Johnson, who later became curator, helped arrange the purchase of a complete set of Goya's Caprichos. This was an advance copy before the first edition and contained a large number of early and partly undescribed states. Many seminal exhibitions marked Johnson's tenure. In the summer of 1941 she organized an exhibition of the Publications of Vollard, the first complete exhibition of his work. She also curated a show of selected prints of Edward Munch in late 1942, his first print exhibition in the United States. American Woodcuts 1670-1950 in 1950 brought together, again for the first time, the entire story of American woodcut and wood-engraving and received international publicity. New Expressions in Fine Printmaking in 1952 was a survey of the latest artistic and technical processes of American artists and toured throughout Europe. For the exhibition, Johnson produced an authoritative work on new techniques.

Johnson focused on acquiring nineteenth century and contemporary prints and drawings. By 1946, she placed special emphasis on lithography prior to 1859. She traveled to Europe in 1952 and acquired seventy-five contemporary European works and a series of Daumier lithographs for the collection. In late 1947 a gift of Japanese prints by Louis V. Ledoux brought the collection of Japanese prints to more than two hundred fifty.

In an effort to foster new artists and printmaking, the department organized the first annual National Print exhibition in 1947, launched with the financial assistance of Samuel Golden, who gave $500 to be used for purchase awards to augment the permanent collection. The Nationals were juried exhibitions of contemporary prints and preparation for these shows required the curator to travel throughout the country evaluating works. Funds for the second National were provided wholly by the Museum and seventeen purchase prizes were awarded. The director reported that "both exhibitions were outstanding successes, and from them a large selection has been chosen each year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts for circulation." By the third National, the director wrote that these exhibitions have "assumed a place of truly national importance in the field of contemporary American print-making." The exhibitions continued through 2001, although they occurred less frequently during the later years, and traveled to other venues through the American Federation of Arts. In the early years, many prints were sold to the public, sometimes through the museum shop. Acquisitions of purchase award prints helped to develop the Museum's collection of contemporary American prints.

In 1955, during the tenth National, a catalog presenting the growth of American printmaking and technical accomplishments of the last ten years was produced. The exhibition, A Decade of American Prints, 1947-1956, which was composed of purchase award prints, traveled to Tokyo for the 1957 summer arts festival. In 1961, another exhibition, Fifteen years of Award-Winning Prints from the Brooklyn Museum National Print Exhibitions, toured through the auspices of the New York State Council on the Arts and the American Federation of Arts.

Due to the continued growth of the collection and the public interest in exhibitions, plans were put into place to expand gallery space. The work, which began in 1961 and was completed in 1963, included the transfer of the print stacks into a new study room and the redesign of office areas. The Print Department, having noted the increasing interest of the general public in fine prints and drawings, hopes that the move to more convenient quarters will encourage this interest and provide more extensive facilities for study and enjoyment of both prints and drawings.

In addition to her regular activities in the department, in 1961 Johnson submitted a proposal to the Ford Foundation to produce a series of ten monographs on contemporary American artists. Entitled American Graphic Artists of the Twentieth Century, her first study centered on the California artist, John Paul Jones. She also profiled Josef Albers, Louise Nevelson, Milton Avery, and Isabel Bishop, among others. Johnson's work continued on these monographs for nearly ten years.

At Johnson's retirement in 1969, the department was now firmly established within the museum. With confidence in the public's appreciation of the collection of prints and drawings, the succeeding curators continued to acquire works and organize exhibitions. Under the stewardship of Jo Miller, the department acquired fifty-two pen and ink drawings by David Levine and Leonard Baskin donated illustrated books and prints from his own press. In 1972, a successful benefit print auction of duplicate holdings brought the department much-needed additional purchase funds. In the early 1970s, Miller assessed the print world and "predicted a renewed interest in realism, a concern with social issues, and wide-ranging experimentation in a variety of mixed-media techniques."

In the early 1980s, consulting curator Gene Baro significantly reorganized collection storage, including rematting older works and matting the many new acquisitions. Cataloging was also brought up-to-date. Baro acquired new contemporary English works by artists Robin Denny, Gordon House, and David Hockney and the department purchased a number of drawings from the exhibition American Drawings in Black and White. Also during this time, Gene Baro and Barry Walker organized major one-artist exhibitions, including shows featuring Gene Davis, Daniel Joshua Goldstein, Nancy Lawton, and Taj Worley. Several exhibitions highlighted selections from the permanent collection, including the memorial Gene Baro Collects.

For much of its history the department was in need of additional storage space to accommodate its expanding collection. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in the spring of 1986 made possible the installation of a new compact storage system and screens, which significantly increased the previously strained storage capacity of the department and allowed for future growth.

The photography collection officially became part of the department in 1994, although the Institute began acquiring photographs much earlier. The Brooklyn Institute opened the first school of photography in the United States in 1889 and annual exhibitions of photographs occurred for over sixty years beginning in 1891. Although there was no formal curatorial photography department, in 1899 the Brooklyn Museum began to acquire photographs from the institute exhibitions and later through the work of museum photographer Herman de Wetter. The Museum's collecting emphasis in the early days was on work of the late Pictorialists.

In 1955, the Museum administration decided to disperse the photographs: a large collection of glass plate negatives from the nineteenth century were sent to Brooklyn Public Library, while other materials remained in storage. In the 1970s the Museum re-established a policy of collecting photographs, though with very little monetary support. Still, through the work of Barbara Millstein, associate curator in the Department of Paintings and Sculpture, gifts came in of photographs by Lewis Hine, Philippe Halsman, and Paul Strand. Millstein also curated photography exhibitions including Classic Photographs from The Brooklyn Museum Collection and In Haiti: Photographs by Walter Rosenblum. In 1993 the collection of photographs and negatives were officially transferred to the Department of Prints and Drawings. In acknowledgement of this transfer, the department changed its name to Prints, Drawings, and Photographs in 1994.

The photography collection has since expanded to more than 18,000 images, including a large collection of photographs by Consuelo Kanaga. Millstein had focused on collecting contemporary American works but European works and a substantial collection of nineteenth century travel photography had also been acquired. Photographers represented include W. Eugene Smith, Gary Winograd, Gertrude Kasebier, Bruce Cratsley, Arthur Leipzig, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, Gordon Matta-Clark, Dorothea Lange, O. Winston Link, and Cindy Sherman. The dealer Marcuse Pffiefer donated large group works by Latin American photographers. Most recently, Barbara Millstein curated the exhibition, Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2001). The ninety-four photographers were selected by a four-person committee who worked together for over a year reviewing submissions.

In addition to the 18,000 photographs, the department currently holds approximately 40,000 prints and 2,000 drawings. The strength of the collection lies in twentieth century American art, which has been acquired consistently since the 1930's and through the Print Nationals since 1947. Fine examples of earlier European and nineteenth century American works are also represented.

As the current head of the department, Marilyn Kushner has continued to organize print exhibitions including Expressionism to Neo-Expressionism: Twentieth-Century German Prints from the Brooklyn Museum Collection (1995) and oversaw the installation of Alone in a Crowd: Prints of the 1930s and 1940s by African-American Artists (1996). Alone in a Crowd showed more than one hundred rare prints by African-American artists. It was the first time that these works were presented together in New York.

The department offices moved to new quarters in 2003 due to construction on the museum building’s façade.

Susan A. Hutchinson (1873-1945) spent her life devoted to library work. She was born in Branford, Connecticut and attended the School of Library Science at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, graduating in 1898. She began her library career in 1896 as the assistant librarian at the Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford, where she worked until 1899. Hutchinson’s career at the Brooklyn Museum began in 1904 when she was hired as librarian. She worked for thirty-five years at the Museum and retired in 1935 with the titles of Librarian and Curator of Prints. As the Museum’s first librarian, she was instrumental in expanding the research collections and oversaw the establishment of the Wilbour Library of Egyptology. She also started the print laboratory at the museum to help young etchers get a start in printing their own work. She wrote and lectured extensively and assembled many print exhibitions which were shown all over the country. She was editor of the American edition of Fine Prints from 1930 to 1934 and was a founding organizer of the Brooklyn Society of Etchers. After retiring from the Museum in October 1935, Hutchinson settled in Hamden, Connecticut.



Carl O. Schniewind (1900-1957) was born in New York City on September 22, 1900. His father, who was a prominent engineer, died when Schniewind was still a boy. In the summer of 1914 he moved to Germany with his mother. Schniewind received a doctorate from Heidelberg in 1924. In 1933 he married Hedi Bretscher and moved to Paris. In 1935 the couple moved to the United States and Schniewind became the librarian and curator of prints at the Brooklyn Museum, where he laid the groundwork for the physical and administrative separation of prints from the library. Schniewind left the Brooklyn Museum in 1940 to become the curator of prints at the Art Institute of Chicago, holding this position until his death on August 29, 1957.



Una Johnson (1905-1997) was born in Dayton, Iowa. She received an M.A. degree from Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1928. Johnson worked as a research assistant at the Cleveland Museum from 1931-1937. She also traveled quite extensively in Europe and North America. As curator at the Brooklyn Museum, Johnson established the National Print exhibition series in 1947 to showcase American artists. She left the staff in 1969 but remained a curator emeritus until her death. After retiring from the Brooklyn Museum she became curator at the Storm King Art Center in upstate New York. An oral history interview with Una Johnson was conducted in 1988; and an audiotape transcript of the interview is available in the archives.



Eileen "Jo" Miller (1927-1982) was born in Madison, Wisconsin. She studied at the University of Chicago and at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also taught printmaking. Miller served as curator from 1969 to 1975. After leaving the Museum, she started the Print Cabinet, an art gallery near Georgetown, Connecticut. Her many publications include Joseph Albers, Prints 1916-70 and Drawings of the Hudson River School.



Nancy Tousley (1943- ) graduated with a B.A. in English from Vassar College. She also studied art at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and printmaking with Clare Romano at the Pratt Graphic Center. Tousley worked as a picture researcher at Crown Publishers, art teacher in the Department of Education at the Brooklyn Museum, a freelance commercial artist, and research assistant in the prints and drawings department at the Museum.



Gene Baro (1925-1982) was a critic, lecturer, and curator. He was educated at the University of Florida, receiving his B.A. in 1947. Early in his career, he held many literary editorships and advisory positions. In 1972, he was the director of the Corcoran Gallery where he organized more than forty shows. He was also on the faculty of Bennington College, and wrote for art publications. Among his publications is a catalogue raisonné of Louise Nevelson's graphics (1974) and The Drawings of Claes Oldenburg. While serving as consulting curator at the Brooklyn Museum, he was also adjunct curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Institute's Museum of Art, beginning in 1980.



Ripley Albright (1951-) was born in Long Beach, California. He received his B.A. from the University of Denver and in 1976 completed an M.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design. In addition to serving as assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum, he spent many years working as an art instructor and artist, a curator at The Bildner Collection, and a consulting exhibition assistant at the Carnegie Institute's Museum of Art.



Barry Walker (1945-) received a B.A. in Art History from Hamilton College in 1969. Before coming to the Brooklyn Museum he worked at Associated American Artists as a gallery assistant and as a writer and salesman at Harry N. Abrams. After leaving the Museum, Barry Walker became the first curator of prints and drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 1991.



Charlotta Kotik (1940-) was born in Prague and received a B.A. and M.A. at Prague’s Charles University. Before coming to the Brooklyn Museum in 1983 she worked at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, working her way up from intern in 1970 to curator by the time she left. Prior to that she worked at the Jewish Museum, National Gallery, and the National Institute for Preservation and Reconstruction of Architectural Landmarks in Prague. At the Brooklyn Museum she served as curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1984, curator of Contemporary Art beginning in 1985 and chair of the Department of Painting and Sculpture from 1992-2000.



Karyn Zieve (1962-) graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Art History. After receiving her M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania she attended the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Prior to the Brooklyn Museum, she held research and fellowship positions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She curated Prints by the Nabis: Vuillard and His Contemporaries (1990) and The Eight and their Circle: Works on Paper (1992) at the Brooklyn Museum.



Linda Konheim Kramer (1939- ) received a B.A. from Smith College in 1961 and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU in the 1990s. Before coming to the Brooklyn Museum she worked with contemporary drawings at Sotheby's in New York. In the 1970s, she was a program administrator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. After her tenure at the Brooklyn Museum, Linda Konheim Kramer became the executive director of the Nancy Graves Foundation in New York.



Barbara Head Millstein graduated from New York University in 1949. Since 1972 she worked at the Brooklyn Museum, serving as associate curator of the Sculpture Garden from 1974 onwards. In 1979 she became head of the photography collection, which was part of the Painting and Sculpture department through 1994. As curator of photographs she organized exhibitions such as Lewis Hine, 1874-1940: A Retrospective of the Photographer and Milton Rogovin: The Forgotton Ones. She also curated shows on New York City landmarks such as The Great East River Bridge 1883-1983. She lectures extensively and consults for various New York City organizations such as South Street Seaport and the New York Municipal Archives. Millstein retired in 2004 from the Brooklyn Museum.



Marilyn Kushner (1948-) received her B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1971 and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1991. Before coming to the Brooklyn Museum, she was curator of collections at the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, and research associate at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has organized or overseen the installation of more than thirty exhibitions including I Wanna Be Loved By You: Photographs of Marilyn Monroe from the Leon and Michaela Constantiner Collection, at the Brooklyn Museum (2005); and Digital: Printmaking Now at the Brooklyn Museum (2002). Kushner publishes and lectures extensively on works on paper. She is an adjunct professor at Rutgers University and Pratt Institute.