Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting @ Philadelphia Art Museum

Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting

Philadelphia Art Museum 

Through November 16, 2025 

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984)

Untitled (Who is Queen), 2020 

Enamel screenprint and graphite pigment 

Sheet: 64 × 49 inches (162.6 × 124.5 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 105-2024-19 

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984)

Untitled (Figure and Malcolm X), 2020

Enamel screenprint and graphite pigment 

Sheet: 64 × 49 inches (162.6 × 124.5 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 105-2024-20

Chuck Close 

Self Portrait, 2017 

Screenprint in ninety-one colors 

Sheet: 69 × 57  3/4 inches (175.3 × 146.7 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x21994(10)

The Philadelphia Art Museum presents Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting, the first exhibition to spotlight four decades of collaborations between the Brand X printmaking workshop and a diverse roster of contemporary artists. On view through November 16, 2025, the exhibition features more than 80 screenprints by Helen Frankenthaler, Rashid Johnson, Alex Katz, Tschabalala Self, and Mickalene Thomas, among many others.

The exhibition celebrates the transformative gift of the Brand X Editions Archive to the Philadelphia Art Museum, presenting a selection from the over 400 screenprints given by master printer and founder Robert Blanton. Since establishing the workshop in 1979, Blanton and his team of skilled printers, chromists, and specialists have worked in collaboration with an impressive list of artists to push screenprinting techniques to meet the artists’ varied styles and expressive ambitions. The body of work from Brooklyn-based Brand X builds significantly on the museum’s extensive holdings of historical screenprints, adding major contemporary examples of traditional and experimental techniques. The Philadelphia Art Museum now holds one of the most comprehensive collections of screenprints along with essential archives related to the medium’s history and evolution from commercial tool to vibrant fine-art technique.

Emmanuel Taku

Entanglement, 2022 

Screenprint, printed in twenty-three colors 

with  collage elements 

Sheet: 60 × 40 1/4 inches  (152.4 × 102.2 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, 2023- 191-32

Emmanuel Taku

Got You, 2022 

Screenprint, printed in twenty-seven colors 

with  collage elements 

Sheet: 60 × 40 1/4 inches  (152.4 × 102.2 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, 2023- 191-33

“It is an honor to be the chosen home for Brand X’s magnificent collection of prints, said Sasha Suda, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the Philadelphia Art Museum. “As expert printmakers, internationally renowned for their craft, Brand X are the true leaders in this field. For a museum like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with such a rich and dedicated history in printmaking, it is a privilege for us to have this opportunity to welcome our visitors to experience and enjoy this generous gift.”

Deborah Kass

OY/YO, 2011 

Two screenprints, printed in three colors on  paper board 

Framed: 21 1/2 × 20 inches (54.6 × 50.8 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x22034a,b

Deborah Kass (b. 1952)

Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner, 2022 

Silkscreen, printed in seven colors on Coventry Rag paper 

Sheet: 57 × 57 inches (144.8 × 144.8 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023-191-4

On view throughout the galleries are the results of Brand X’s dynamic collaborations across four decades of work. Together, the prints reveal the remarkable versatility of screenprinting. In the first gallery, for instance, works by Rashid Johnson, Deborah Kass, Adam Pendleton, and Mickalene Thomas demonstrate the medium’s ability to mimic the richness of paint layers, render a photographic precision, and produce variegated textures and surfaces. These artists expand the technical boundaries of screenprint in their exploration of themes relating to belonging, memory, and self-definition. From the dense, painterly urgency of Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red to the layered intricacy of Mickalene Thomas’s November 1977, each work here shows how, at the Brand X workshop, screenprinting can be stretched, challenged, and transformed in response to an artist’s creative impulses.

Troy Michie 

Doubling, 2019 

Screenprint, Framed: 40 × 30 inches (101.6 × 76.2 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x22005(6)

Emily Mae Smith 

Poetry (Toy in Blood), 2022 

Screenprint, printed in forty-seven colors 

Sheet:  60 × 45 1/2 inches (152.4 × 115.6 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2024, 105- 2024-30(11)

The exhibition also addresses themes relating to text and language, pattern and decoration, graphic illusion, and landscape and figuration. Eight progressive proofs of Vija Celmins’s Ocean Surface offer a rare view onto the screenprinting process. From print to print, visitors can see how the image was formed cumulatively—by the sequential printing of individual screens, each bearing a single layer of ink. In final form, Celmins’s image materializes through sixteen applications of nuanced grays—an additive and subtle process apt for rendering the depth and detail of the ocean. Throughout the exhibition, equal emphasis is given to the pictorial and the material. Brand X Editions shines light on the technical procedures and the many roles—beyond that of the artist—that are vital to the production of screenprints.

“Just like the work that happens at Brand X, this exhibition and its catalogue were thoroughly collaborative endeavors, said Louis Marchesano, curator of the exhibition and the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Conservation. “The addition of the Brand X Editions Archive, which will continue to grow as the studio produces more editions, goes a long way toward building an authoritative resource on screenprinting at the museum.”

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990)

Homebodies – All American 1, 2022

Monoprint, fabric collage, pigment wash, 

hand coloring, and enamel silkscreen 

Sheet (each): 24 × 18 inches (61 × 45.7 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023-191-29a,b

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990)

Homebodies – All American 1, 2022

Monoprint, fabric collage, pigment wash, 

hand coloring, and enamel silkscreen 

Sheet (each): 24 × 18 inches (61 × 45.7 cm) 

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023-191-29a,b

Rashid Johnson 

Seascape, 2023 

Screenprint, printed in nine colors, with hand, 

applied navy acrylic mixture 

Gift of Brand X  Editions, New York, 2023, 105-2024-9

Rashid Johnson 

Untitled Large Mosaic, 2025

Screenprint, framed: 61 X 105 inches (1 154.9x 266.7 cm)

Gift of Brand X Editions, New York, 2023, x 22005(5)

Extending the exhibition beyond the gallery space, Rashid Johnson’s Untitled (Large Mosaic), 2025, is displayed in the museum’s Forum Balcony. For over three years, Rashid Johnson and his collaborators at Brand X developed this spectacular 293-color print, combining traditional screenprinting techniques—visible in the flat passages of bold color—with unconventional materials, including wood veneer, mirrored mylar, and cast paper oyster shells. Inspired by Johnson’s low-relief wall mosaics composed of innumerable tile fragments and other bits of material, this project captures Brand X’s enduring commitment to pursuing new levels of technical innovation and experimentation.

Brand X Editions: Innovation in Screenprinting is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Philadelphia Art Museum curators and paper conservators, an interview with Robert Blanton and David DeSanctis of Brand X, a technical glossary related to the history and technique of screenprint, and an inventory of the archive held by Philadelphia Art Museum.

The exhibition is curated by Louis Marchesano, the Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Deputy Director of Cultural Affairs and Conservation, with Em Dombrovskaya, the Suzanne Andrée Curatorial Fellow; Laurel Garber, the Park Family Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings; and Emily Friedman, the Allen and Kelli Questrom Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Dallas Museum of Art.

A series of exhibitions by Brand X collaborators including Rashid Johnson and Joel Mesler will be shown at the Philadelphia Art Museum through 2028.

PHILADELPHIA ART MUSEUM 

Morgan, Korman, and Field Galleries

2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130

www.visitpham.org

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop @ Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge + San Antonio Museum of Art

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop

Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge

September 3, 2015 - January 3, 2016 

CORITA KENT

the juiciest tomato of all, 1964 

Screenprint 

Collection of Jason Simon, New York 

© Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles

The Harvard Art Museums present Corita Kent and the Language of Pop, a special exhibition on display September 3, 2015 to January 3, 2016 at Harvard before travelling to the San Antonio Museum of Art, where it will be on view February 13 to May 8, 2016. The exhibition is curated by Susan Dackerman, the former Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums (2005–2014) and current consultative curator of prints. Corita Kent was an activist nun who juxtaposed spiritual, pop cultural, literary, and political writings alongside symbols of consumer culture and modern life in order to create bold images and prints during the 1960s. Also known as Sister Mary Corita, Kent is often seen as a curiosity or an “anomaly” in the pop art movement. Corita Kent and the Language of Pop positions Corita Kent and her work within the pop art idiom, showing how she is an innovative contemporary of Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and other pop art icons. The exhibition also expands the current scholarship on Corita Kent’s art, elevating the role of her artwork by identifying its place in the artistic and cultural movements of her time.

CORITA KENT (American, 1918–1986) was a Roman Catholic nun, an artist, and an educator. From 1936 to 1968 she lived, studied, and taught at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, and she headed the art department at the college there from 1964 to 1968. In 1968, Corita Kent left Immaculate Heart and relocated to Boston, where she lived until her death in 1986. The screenprints she created during the 1960s are typical examples of pop art, embodying the vivid palette, focus on everyday subjects, and mass-produced quality of ephemeral objects. Corita Kent and the Language of Pop examines Kent’s screenprints as well as her 1971 design painted on the Boston Gas (now National Grid) tank, a roadside landmark in Boston.

The exhibition frames Corita Kent’s work within the pop movement while also considering other prevailing artistic, social, and religious movements of the time. In particular, the exhibition explores how Corita Kent’s work both responded to and advanced the concerns of Vatican II, a movement to modernize the Catholic Church and make it more relevant to contemporary society. The church advocated, among other changes to traditional liturgy, conducting the Mass in the local, vernacular language. Corita Kent, like her pop art contemporaries, simultaneously turned to vernacular texts for inclusion in her prints, drawing from such colloquial sources as product slogans, street signs, and Beatles lyrics.

“Because of Kent’s status as a nun, her biography has been the focus of most scholarship about her work,” said Susan Dackerman. “However, when you examine her work alongside contemporary pop artists like Warhol and Ruscha, it becomes clear that she was a critical and relevant voice in the emerging pop discourse of the 1960s.”

The exhibition grew out of conversations Susan Dackerman had with Jennifer Roberts, the Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities in the Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA) at Harvard, around the time that Roberts was teaching an undergraduate seminar on pop art during the Spring 2010 semester. Roberts often brought her students to examine prints in the museums’ collections, and these meetings generated discussions about Kent’s work as well as its relationship to the work of her better-known contemporaries such as Warhol, Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist, among others. The following semester, HAA professors Henri Zerner and Benjamin Buchloh taught a graduate seminar on reproductive technologies in the 1960s, which ignited interest in printed pop among Harvard’s graduate students in art history. Soon after, a project group came together, providing a forum for conversations about Kent’s work that ultimately led to the development of the exhibition’s six central themes: Los Angeles, c. 1962; The Word; Salvation at the Supermarket; L.A. Traffic; The Political Landscape; and Boston, 1971: The Gas Tank. Kent’s papers, deposited at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, were an important resource to the team of scholars and students. 

“Installed in our generous new Special Exhibitions Gallery and reflecting our research and teaching mission, Corita Kent and the Language of Pop brilliantly recalibrates, recasts, reconsiders, and repositions Corita Kent’s remarkable work,” said Deborah Martin Kao, the Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator and Interim Co-Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “In this enlightening special exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, Susan Dackerman and her collaborators also argue for a broadening of how we apprehend pop art, cleaving it from its iconic and seemingly unassailable historic wrapper and returning it to the immediacy of the beat of the streets of 1960s Los Angeles, New York, and even Boston.”

Over 150 prints, along with a selection of films, books, and other works, are included in the exhibition. More than 60 of Corita Kent’s prints, depicting language garnered from popular culture such as product slogans and road signs, appear alongside about the same number of works by her prominent contemporaries, including Warhol, Ruscha, Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, and Robert Indiana.

Rarely shown (and newly restored) films by Thomas Conrad and Baylis Glascock that feature Kent at Immaculate Heart in the 1960s are presented in the exhibition. The films include Glascock’s Mary’s Day 1964, Mary’s Day 1965, and We Have No Art (1967), as well as Conrad’s Alleluia: Being a True Account of the Life and Times of Sister Mary Corita IHM (1967). Another screen in the exhibition is dedicated to slides taken by Corita Kent and her associates at Immaculate Heart College during the 1950s and ’60s. These slides depict their pop art projects as well as document visits to museums, galleries, and artists’ studios. The slides also include shots of magazine advertisements, supermarket goods, and street signs, many of which were incorporated into Corita Kent’s screenprints.

In 1971, Corita Kent created a bold, pop art design for the Boston Gas (now National Grid) tank located alongside I-93 south of downtown Boston. Her vivid rainbow swashes of color on the tank can be viewed as the culmination of her engagement with pop art, providing Boston with its own pop art monument, not unlike the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. A large photo mural of the tank appears in the exhibition, along with the first public presentation of the 7-inch-high wooden tank model on which Corita Kent executed her design.

A related exhibition exploring Kent’s teaching, artistic process, career, and activism, Corita Kent: Footnotes and Headlines, is on display August 24 through September 18, 2015, at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

A catalogue, published by the Harvard Art Museums and distributed by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition. Through nearly 90 illustrated entries and four essays by distinguished scholars, the publication fills a gap in the scholarship about Kent’s work. The catalogue was edited by Susan Dackerman and features essays by Dackerman; Julia Bryan-Wilson, associate professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California, Berkeley; Richard Meyer, the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History at Stanford University; and Jennifer L. Roberts, the Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. The illustrated entries were written by Dackerman and graduate students from a variety of disciplines.

Corita Kent and the Language of Pop was organized by the Harvard Art Museums and curated by Susan Dackerman, the former Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums (2005–2014) and current consultative curator of prints.

Lenders include: Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Thomas Conrad, Cupertino, California; Corita Art Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles; Davis Museum at Wellesley College; Fine Arts Library, Harvard University; Baylis Glascock, Los Angeles; Mary Anne Karia (née Mikulka), New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Grid, Boston; The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; Jason Simon, New York; and three anonymous lenders.

HARVARD ART MUSEUMS

32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

www.harvardmuseums.org