X

MoMA Acquires the Occupy Print Portfolio


October 11, 2013 | Kyle Chayka

According to The Guardian, the Museum of Modern Art has acquired a collection of prints curated by the Booklyn Artists Alliance entitled the Occuprint Portfolio.” It is a collection of silk-screened artists’ prints by Occupy protesters like Molly Crabapple, Jesus Barraza and John Emerson, among many others.

Christophe Cherix, the museum’s chief curator of drawings says that while they were not looking specifically for Occupy-related work they felt that the collection of prints accurately represented what many of the city’s artists have been working on.

We felt the portfolio was saying something very important in relation to New York, what’s happening now, and at the same time we felt the portfolio had a very interesting relationship to other works in the collection from different periods but that are all trying to socially engage with the public.

This means the prints can now be reproduced in high-quality for the press as well as other educational and other non-commercial uses. However, the MoMA is not the only institution that has shown interest in the collection of prints, with schools such as Virginia Commonwealth University, Cornell University as well as the University of California at Berkeley’s Bancroft Library investing in the collection.