September 11–December 12, 2026
UIC Gallery 400
Founded in 1947 by the late artist, educator, and master printer Robert Blackburn, the Printmaking Workshop arose from an era of racial segregation when artists of color had limited opportunities and from the dissolution of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, which had supported community art centers across the country, including Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center.
Press & Pull traces this history through prints made at the Workshop, archival ephemera, and video drawn from its archive. Its Chicago iteration includes an additional over 45 prints that identify historical similarities and differences between the Workshop and printmaking practices in Chicago. This comparative approach offers factors that have contributed to Chicago’s printmaking scene, such as the founding of the South Side Community Art Center, the flight of African Americans from the South and Jews from the Soviet Union, the Black Arts Movement, and communal skill sharing cultivated in now-shuttered print shops and contemporary printers’ guilds.
The Chicago iteration is co-curated by me and Lorelei Stewart. The original Press & Pull was curated by Shameekia Shantel Johnson with Jazmine Catasús, Essye Klempner, and Ethel Renia.
Photos by Jonas Mikowsch Müller-Ahlheim.