You Are Going On A Trip: Modern and Contemporary Prints from the Permanent Collection

You Are Going On A Trip brings together a selection of highlights from the Museum’s wide-ranging collection of Modern and Contemporary prints. Focusing on works produced between the 1940s and 1970s, the exhibition presents an eclectic array of works on paper created by artists from the United States and other countries around the world. Coinciding with the summer—a season typically designated for travel—the exhibition offers the viewer a metaphoric venture to various new destinations. Titled after an etching by Charles Garabedian that depicts the gentle hand of the artist touching the viewer's consciousness, the exhibition, like the image, plants the seed of a journey.

Organized by writer and independent curator, Michael Duncan, the exhibition is loosely divided into themes, including dreams, icons, notions of home and travel, history, and images of humans and wildlife. Duncan states, “Prints take us places. They lead us to exotic and familiar locales, offering mind-expanding fantasies as well as fresh takes on everyday objects. They present new considerations of well-known people and stories and revisit historical events. They confront desires and goals and sometimes lead to an expansion of our definitions of art.” His distinctive take on the Museum’s rich collection of lithographs, screenprints, woodblock prints, and other forms of printmaking offers novel ports of entry into a vast range of imagery.

Artists represented include Terry Allen, Lee Bontecou, John Randolph Carter, Vija Celmins, Bruce Conner, José Luis Cuevas, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Red Grooms, Nancy Grossman, Hagiwara Hideo, Paul Jacoulet, Allen Jones, Oskar Kokoschka, Jacob Lawrence, Rico Lebrun, Marisol, Kerry James Marshall, Malcolm Morley, Alice Neel, Sidney Nolan, Eduardo Paolozzi, Pablo Picasso, Ken Price, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Munakata Shiko, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Raphael Soyer, Rufino Tamayo, Azechi Utemaro, Andy Warhol, June Wayne, Grant Wood, and many others.

Image credit: Charles Garabedian, You Are Going on a Trip, 1980. Etching. SBMA, Gift of Stephen Acronico.