Get some culture: Spencer printroom

By Francesca Chambers

Thursday, October 22, 2009

 Fridays in the printroom at the Spencer Museum of Art are all about you. From 10 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., you can visit the printroom and request to see the original copy of any photograph, drawing, lithograph or other type of the 14,000 works on print the museum owns.

 “Part of the reason to put them away is to keep them nice,” says Kate Meyer, curatorial assistant of prints and drawings, about the prints. “Part of the reason for Fridays is that they don’t do anybody any good if you don’t get them out.”

 The only rules are no gum and no pens. Only pencils are allowed in the “land of paper.” Located just past the gift shop if you take a left at the main entrance, the printroom is easy to overlook. It looks like an office area, quite unlike the galleries meant for viewing art.

 Waiting for you in the printroom is Meyer, Luke Jordan, lecturer of design, and maybe a few artsy graduate students who enjoy shooting the breeze about art with anyone who will listen.

 You can search the museum’s art collection online before your trip to figure out what type and era of prints fascinate you, or you can just stop by. Meyer’s knowledge about printmaking is as eclectic as the museum’s collection.

 She can tell you what the meaning of fruit is in different prints based on the culture and era, why artists use pseudonyms and how a print can still be an original, even if it is one of 50 copies.

 Meyer will spend hours telling you anything you want to know — or anything she thinks you should know — about the prints because, as she says, “Fridays are about you.”

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