Platemark: prints and the printmaking ecosystem

In s2e2, co-hosts Ann Shafer and Tru Ludwig talk about Europe in the 15th century and the state of printmaking, the printing press, moveable type, and early woodcuts. This episode sets the stage for the rest of the story of the history of Western printmaking.

Platemark Series Two, History of Prints kicks off with Ann Shafer and co-host Tru Ludwig introducing the series. They talk about teaching the History of Prints (HoP) for the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) using the print collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art over the course of 15 years. They talk about how the class brought them together and about how transformative it was for hundreds of MICA's BFA students.

In the final episode in season one, Ann and Ben talk about the print ecosystem: collaborative printmaking, print publishing, galleries, art fairs, and the fabulous cast of characters that inhabit the print world.

Ann and Ben discuss the ballet that occurs in the printshop when the team is editioning a print. Everything is planned. Jigs are made. Everyone has their role. When it's running smoothly, it's sublime. Also, it's hard work.

Ann Shafer has a new podcast called The Curator's Choice in which she talks about one object (or set of set of objects) and why she likes it, how she would pitch it, and other behind-the-thinking stuff.

In s1e7, Ann and Ben finally turn to prints and printmaking, and evangelize about how wonderful prints are, why they are different and special, why it takes work to get over the hump of understanding technique to get to content. They discuss how technique can inform meaning, how the translation of an image from one surface to another only adds interest and conceptual rigor, and the ins and outs of multiplicity.

Editions are the topic of this bonus episode. Ann and Ben talk about the ins and outs of editions: definitions, numbering, exceptions, the publisher-artist relationship. It's definitely not simple.

In episode 106, Ann and Ben continue their conversation about the Western canon, the state of museums in the 21st century, and discuss breaking down the systems that are the foundation of the modern museum.

In this bonus episode, Ann and Ben talk about how they got into this art thing in the first place. Seems it helped to have artists in the family.

In s1e5, Ann and Ben talk about the Western art-historical canon and recent, important efforts to redefine it, to break it apart, to destroy it. How can/should museums embrace multiple voices and points of view? What happens to museum collections?

After the debut of the podcast Platemark, the most pressing listener question had to do with the positionality statement. That's where Shafer and Levy introduce themselves by clarifying their gender, sexuality, and race (Shafer: cis-het white woman; Levy: cis-het white man). This bonus episode tackles the issue of positionality as well as the land acknowledgments (Shafer: Baltimore is on the land of the Piscataway Conoy people; Levy: Cleveland is on the ancestral land of the Erie people). There's a lot to unpack and it is uncomfortable. But that's the point.

In s1e4, Ann and Ben continue their conversation about value but turn toward artistic value rather than monetary value. Both Ann and Ben describe their own systems for evaluating a work of art. Ben's system centers on reverse engineering a work and looking at the decisions made at each step. Ann's system is a long and wide-ranging list of questions that get filed into emotional impact and visual impact. All of which is to say, there is no right or wrong way to approach a work of art.

In s1e3, Ann and Ben take a deep dive into value, beginning with market value. How is it established, who decides what the value of a work should be, how value is arrived at, and how it's a totally subjective idea.

In s1e2, Ann is in the hotseat as Ben asks her about her beginnings as a curator from an internship at the Whitney Museum of American Art during college, to graduate school at Williams College, to the prints and drawings department at the National Gallery of Art, and to the prints, drawings, and photographs department at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Ann talks about how it happened, highlights along the way, and how much it meant to her. Interwoven is a love letter to the many students that passed through the BMA's studyroom, the exhibitions that were most meaningful, and the objects she acquired for the BMA's collection.

In series 1 episode 1, Ann and Ben talk about critiques and studio visits, focusing on a program they developed in partnership with the printmaking department at the Maryland Institute College of Art. At the start of the senior year, Ann and Ben held critiques with MICA printmakers as they embarked on their final theses, which culminate with end-of-the-year exhibitions. Following those initial visits to the seniors' studios, Ann and Ben welcomed students to the Baltimore Museum of Art's print studyroom and pulled out objects from the permanent collection that they deemed germane to each artists' work. These individual second visits enabled further conversation about the direction of the seniors' thesis work and helped (we hoped) to energize them about new ideas and risks. Lastly, Ann and Ben returned to MICA near the end of the year to have a final look at the work produced. This was really for Ann and Ben to see how the work had developed and to evaluate who impactful we had been. This episode also acts as Ben's origin story since he is a studio art graduate of MICA's printmaking department. He brought his technical know-how to the BMA's department of prints, drawings, and photographs in an invaluable way.

In the first, short episode, Ann and Ben introduce listeners to Platemark Season One. Over eight episodes they discuss all manner of topics relating to museums and curators, critiques and studio visits, market value and conceptual value, redefining the Western art historical canon and decolonization, and prints and printmaking. The main goal of the podcast is to demystify the role of the curator and the museum, and to sing the praises of prints and printmaking.