By Heather Hennigan

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This coming Tuesday, Feb. 7, the Samek Art Gallery will premiere its printmaking exhibition, The Sandy & John Nesbitt Collection: “The Discriminating Eye At Work.”

The exhibition showcases prints of the highest quality, generously loaned to the Samek Art Gallery by Sandy and John Nesbitt ’64, from their private collection. The prints are original woodcuts, engravings, etchings and aquatints by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Piranesi, Matisse, Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Joan Mirò and many others.

Spanning the entire history of Western printmaking from 1500 to 1971, the exhibition includes distinguished examples from every epoch. Also on display will be fine examples of every major printmaking technique used by the great printmakers in Western art, ranging from cityscapes in Rome to Surrealist landscapes to artists’ self-portraits.

Christine Andersson,professor of art history, organized the show with the help of 11 students from her course, “Popular Culture and Prints,” which she taught last year. Her students researched the historical and art-historical contexts of the prints and wrote both the show’s wall labels and the exhibition catalogue texts. “Student-generated exhibitions are rare at the Samek Art Gallery, so I consider this to be an event of special interest to all of our students interested in the arts,” Andersson said. 

All are invited to the exhibition’s opening, which will begin at 2:30 p.m. with a public conversation by the Nesbitts about their activities as collectors. A reception will follow at 4:30 p.m. The exhibition will be on view in the Samek Art Gallery in the Elaine Langone Center until March 29.