Print Room

The Max Kade - Erich H. Markel Department of Graphic Arts at the Spencer Museum of Art houses nearly ten thousand works of art on paper (prints, drawings, photographs, and artists' books). The core of our old master collection of prints was given by the Max Kade Foundation, whose president at the time of the gift was the late Erich H. Markel. The facility includes a room for the study of works of art on paper that can accommodate a class of about twenty students. We call this the Printroom. We would like to consider the electronic images that you will look at here as an extension of the Printroom, a place where you can come to look at and think about works of art on paper.

Of course this kind of viewing is very different from looking at the original work of art. In addition to the problems of resolution and accurate color, works of art on paper have a multitude of special tactile qualities. While we offer you high resolution images scanned from photographs that have intentionally tried to show some of the texture and relief of the prints, there is no substitute for viewing an original. We hope that this site will serve as a catalyst for direct and personal study prints.