Helen Frankenthaler, Untitled, 1967, screenprint, 25 3/4 x 17 7/8 inches (65.4 x 45.4 cm). © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Chiron Press, New York. Photograph by Steven Sloman, courtesy of Helen Frankenthaler Foundation
The University of Texas’ Blanton Museum of Art has told Glasstire that the Austin institution was recently gifted 16 works by Helen Frankenthaler. Given as part of a new initiative by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the 10 prints and 6 printing proofs will be accompanied by a $25,000 grant that will go towards research and programming around the works.
The Blanton was one of ten university museums selected to participate in the first phase of the foundation’s Frankenthaler Prints Initiative. In an announcement about the program, the foundation said that the selected institutions were chosen for their dedication to preserving and showing the art of printmaking, and for the fact that they all had “few or no examples of Frankenthaler’s prints in their collections.” A second round of museums will be added to the initiative in 2019.
The foundation also released a list of art schools across the U.S. that are recipients of the Frankenthaler Scholarships — one-time $500,000 endowment gifts designed to create awards for MFA painting students. The four universities who received the first round of Frankenthaler Scholarships include the Columbia University School of the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and the Yale School of Art. In its second year, the program plans to give $500,000 gifts to four additional MFA or PhD art history programs.
Since it became active in 2013, after the artist’s estate closed, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has supported the artist’s legacy by publishing a catalogue raisonné of her work, providing granting opportunities, and facilitating the involvement of Frankenthaler’s work in exhibitions across the world. For more information on the foundation, go here.
Museums participating in the first round of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative include:
•Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin
• Bowdoin College Museum of Art
• University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum
• Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts/Hammer Museum, UCLA
• The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
• Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• Princeton University Art Museum
• RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design
• SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah College of Art and Design
• Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence
