Helen Frankenthaler, First Stone, 1961, five color lithograph, 22 1/4 × 30 in. (56.5 × 76.2 cm) © 2025 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), West Islip, New York.
Frankenthaler Prints Initiative
The Frankenthaler Prints Initiative was launched in 2018 with a mission to enrich academic institutions’ collections and resources and promote scholarly research on Frankenthaler’s innovative contributions to the field of printmaking. Our twenty Prints Initiative grantees were selected based on a demonstrated commitment to prints as a significant collecting area and teaching tool. In addition to these gifts, institutions were provided with funding to generate new scholarly investigation, exhibitions, and programming surrounding Frankenthaler’s printmaking practice.
Frankenthaler created her first published print, First Stone, in 1961—the inception of a decades-long practice in the medium. Over the years, Frankenthaler collaborated with some of the foremost print workshops in the world, including Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), Tyler Graphics, 2RC Editrice, Garner Tullis, Mixografia, and Polígrafa among others. Ruth Fine, former Curator of Modern Prints and Drawings and Special Projects in Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, a longtime friend of Frankenthaler and a leading authority on her prints, continues to serve as an advisor to the Foundation for this initiative helping to select the prints for each museum. The works represent the range of media Frankenthaler used in her printmaking, including etching, lithography, monotype, monoprint, pochoir, screenprint, woodcut, and other techniques, as well as combinations of these methods.
The Frankenthaler Prints Initiative amplifies the impact of Helen Frankenthaler’s legacy both as one of the most important American abstract painters of the 20th century and as an outspoken champion of arts education.
Round One Recipients
The inaugural round of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative in 2018 awarded gifts and grants to ten university art museums including:
• Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin, Austin
• Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME
• University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa
• Hammer Museum, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles
• Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
• Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ
• RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence
• SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA
• Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence
Across those museums and their affiliated institutions, the initiative generated nine exhibitions, four symposia, and three academic courses. Other programming highlights included printmaking workshops for local high school students at SCAD Museum of Art, public programs and new projects and partnerships with the Nasher Museum of Art’s teen program at Duke University, and public printmaking workshops geared toward teens and families that PAFA.
Round Two Recipients
The second round of Prints Initiative gifts, awarded to the following institutions, began in 2023:
• Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
• Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
• Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington
• Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens
• Grey Art Museum, New York University, New York
• Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle
• Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
• North Dakota Museum of Art, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks
• Syracuse University Art Museum, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
• University of New Mexico Art Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Forthcoming programming for our second cycle of Frankenthaler Prints Initiative gifts will be announced on our website.