A collaborative hand papermaking and printmaking center devoted to artists and creating new work, since 1986.
The Brodsky Center at PAFA empowers artists to explore, experiment, and extend boundaries by creating new work in collaboration with master printers and papermakers. Since its founding in 1986 by Judith K. Brodsky, it has purposely and proudly engaged artists of color and women artists as well as other underrepresented communities.
With a commitment to Philadelphia’s diverse neighborhoods, the Brodsky Center advances PAFA’s reach locally and internationally by educating students, promoting the singular work and innovative ideas of influential artists, and inviting all audiences to appreciate the relevance of paper and print in contemporary arts and culture.
Artists-in-residence are invited to engage in one-on-one collaborations with the Brodsky Center’s collaborative printers and papermakers.
These experts and innovators make it possible for artists to translate their vision into a media that may be new to them. The Brodsky Center is dedicated to the promotion of editions, paper and the printed image as central to contemporary art practice. –view artists available for collection
Since the Brodsky Center was conceived, diversity has been central to its mission.
A powerful and resourceful environment that includes hand papermaking and printmaking studios stimulated the creation to date of 660 highly complex editions with 365 artists, of whom 37% are non-white of American Indian, African, Latinx, and Asian descent, and 60% are female. The BC collaborates with artists who engage printmaking and papermaking as indispensable mediums for the expression of unique ideas and are either new to print and paper or use them as equal tools along with painting, sculpture and new media. They include Elizabeth Catlett, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, David Driskell, Chitra Ganesh, Sam Gilliam, Mona Hatoum, Sharon Hayes, Barkley L. Hendricks, William Kentridge, Pepón Osorio, Nell Painter, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Kiki Smith, Pat Steir, Mickalene Thomas, June Wayne, and Didier William, among others.
The Brodsky Center is part of the School of Fine Arts at PAFA
The Brodsky Center’s mission has always been grounded in its academic context with the goal of deepening the impact of artistic creativity and the printmaking discipline on pedagogy and curricula through the engagement of students and faculty with artists-in-residence invited to create new works of art.
Students access internship and professional opportunities to learn about the process of editioning, marketing, and selling artists’ prints. Students learn from artists-in-residence, who will make prints alongside them in the print shop. A new papermaking facility at PAFA provides papermaking opportunities for both Brodsky Center editions and PAFA students. –learn about opportunities for students
Events for the Public
Artists-in-residence give talks that are widely announced, thus affording access by the public to interaction with distinguished visual artists and their ideas. In addition, the Brodsky Center organizes traveling exhibitions that introduce contemporary prints and handmade paper projects to regional, national, and international audiences. –view the latest updates and events
History
The Brodsky Center was established in 1986 at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, as the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (RCIPP), and renamed Brodsky Center in 2006 in honor of its founding director. In collaboration with colleagues who were teaching women and post-colonial studies, Judith K. Brodsky’s vision centered around sustaining artists whose work had been overlooked by the mainstream art world along with a given prevalence to women artists and artists of color. In 2018 the Brodsky Center joined PAFA where print and paper are core curricular mediums, with 44% of PAFA collection comprising works on paper and a printmaking department established since 1980 with artist Peter Paone as its first Chair and funds donated by Ben Wolf whose generous service is recognized in the ongoing Annual Student Exhibition Ben Wolf Award.
Editions produced by the Brodsky Center are included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Georgia Museum of Art/University of GA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Newark Museum, Sheldon Museum of Art/University of NE, Stadtmuseum Berlin, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Whitney Museum of American Art, and other international institutions as well as many private collections.