Pressed: The Woodcut

December 4, 2001 – March 30, 2002

The first in a series of four exhibitions drawn from Tacoma Art Museum’s distinguished print collection, Pressed: The Woodcut was a technical and historical consideration of images printed from intricately carved wooden blocks. Selections from Tacoma Art Museums’s collection of Japanese prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were presented with modern and contemporary works by American artists. The selected prints highlighted the distinctive ways these cultures have interpreted the media for mass communication and creative expression. A carved woodblock, tools, and woodcut-illustrated books illuminated how the printmaker achieved the final artwork. In addition to engaging the process’s cultural history, visitors learned to look at the details of works, seeing methods through the finished product.