Last fall, as three members of the Harvard Art Museums’ Student Board, we had the opportunity to travel to New York City to acquire new works for the Student Print Rental Program.

We accompanied Elizabeth Rudy, the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Associate Curator of Prints; Christina Taylor, assistant paper conservator in the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies; and Erin Northington, assistant director of student programs and campus initiatives. Our first stop was Times Square to see Kehinde Wiley’s public sculpture Rumors of War. Throngs of tourists crowded the statue, taking pictures of an installation that has sparked critical conversations on the memorialization of (and institutional silence around) American history. Wiley’s work inspired us to think ahead about the prints we would select for the rental program and to question the changes and conversations we wanted to bring back to the museums. 

Early the next morning, we started our day with a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Renaissance of Etching exhibition, a groundbreaking show that featured 15th- and 16th-century prints from France, the North (Low Countries and the Netherlands), and Italy. Visiting this exhibition reminded us of the wide-ranging techniques that could be applied to the print medium. We enjoyed meeting Nadine Orenstein, the exhibition curator, whose knowledge of Old Master prints shed light on the long, complex history of printmaking.

We headed next to the Editions/Artists’ Book Fair (E/AB) to make our selections for the rental program. We were interested in visually appealing, contemporary works that would speak to students and have political relevance. We also needed to consider their price, materials, and size. After much discussion, we agreed on a print by Willie Cole that was part of his larger series Contemporary Soles. The work features an iron that simultaneously represents domestic labor and mirrors the geometry of an African mask, an apparent intervention in the traditional Western mindset of artistic representation.

We then made our way to Print Fest at the International Print Center New York, where we each picked a print made by emerging artists. Unlike E/AB, the atmosphere was more casual, and most vendors were art students about our age selling their own work. It was illuminating to talk directly to the artists whose prints we were interested in acquiring—we learned about the personal touches they added to their printmaking practice. 

We selected prints that we personally felt drawn to, for a variety of reasons. Chris chose a print by Cara Lynch, a current M.F.A. student at Columbia University, who re-appropriated images from a magazine cover and silkscreened them onto a red velvet surface. He picked this print because he liked its texture and pop culture themes, and he wanted to diversify the materiality of the print rental collection. Yong Han picked the print “Mongolian Hot Pot Devils” by Ritual Lu, a member of the student collective Durians, which is a group of young artists of color. Daniel chose Solution to Worksheet for Making Room: Room for Sharing, by Kaela Mei-Chee Chambers, because it offers an inspiring and inviting message. The room the artist has depicted in this “solution” is one designed “for sharing,” one that offers two doorways for the viewer to choose between. Daniel imagines that a future Harvard student, when consumed by schoolwork and deadlines, could look up at this piece on their dorm room wall and be reminded of the opportunities for generosity and friendship that surround us. 

Following our New York trip, we are now excited to see these prints become part of the museums’ Student Print Rental Program and grateful for this opportunity to give back to the museum we have loved so much in our four years at Harvard.

Chris Chow is a senior on the Student Board. He is concentrating in history and literature and art, film, and visual studies.

Yong Han Poh is a senior on the Student Board. She is concentrating in social anthropology and East Asian studies.

Daniel Rosenblatt is a senior on the Student Board. He is concentrating in history and literature.