Washington Printmakers Gallery
“An artist-run printmaking gallery at 1675 Wisconsin Avenue NW presenting original prints in all media by the Washington area's printmaking artists, maintaining the printmaking tradition as a fine art practice in the commercial gallery format that makes original prints accessible to a broad Georgetown collecting audience.”
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Washington Printmakers Gallery at 1675 Wisconsin Avenue NW is an artist-run gallery dedicated to original printmaking in all media, presenting the work of the Washington area’s printmaking artists in the commercial gallery format. The gallery’s artist-run structure, in which the member printmakers share the responsibility for operating the exhibition space and the selection of the gallery’s program, reflects the printmaking community’s tradition of collective organization: the printmaking cooperative has been a characteristic American art institution since the WPA-era graphic arts workshops of the 1930s established the model.
Printmaking as a fine art medium encompasses the full range of the print matrix: the etching and engraving that work in intaglio from the incised metal plate; the woodblock and wood engraving that work in relief from the carved wood surface; the lithograph that works from the flat stone or metal plate through the chemical process of oil and water repulsion; and the screenprint that works through the stencil. Each medium produces a specific quality of mark and a specific tonal range that the printmaker chooses for the specific image’s expressive requirements.
The Washington Printmakers Gallery at 1675 Wisconsin serves the Georgetown art collector who values the original print as a democratic fine art form: the print exists in an edition that allows multiple collectors to own the same image, which keeps the price accessible while the artist’s hand remains present in the physical making of each example in the edition.
Hours run Tuesday through Sunday. The printmaking cooperative model at Washington Printmakers Gallery means the gallery’s program is generated by the member artists rather than by a single gallerist’s curatorial vision, which produces the diversity of subject, technique, and aesthetic position that a multi-member artist gallery provides. The Georgetown art buyer who collects prints finds at Washington Printmakers Gallery the range of the contemporary printmaking practice from the traditional intaglio etching through the contemporary screenprint and the digital print that has been produced on the artist-controlled press.
The print as a collectible fine art form offers the Georgetown buyer the specific pleasure of the intimate scale: the print that is typically smaller than the painting and the sculpture allows the collector to live with multiple works in the limited wall space of the Georgetown townhouse room in a way that the large-scale painting does not permit. The print portfolio is a Georgetown collection format that the Washington Printmakers Gallery serves directly. Gallery hours run Tuesday through Sunday. The print collecting tradition at Washington Printmakers Gallery at 1675 Wisconsin Avenue NW is supported by the gallery’s educational program: the printmaking demonstrations and the discussions of technique that the member artists provide to the Georgetown art public create the informed collector who understands the specific technical achievement that the etching, the lithograph, or the woodblock print represents. The Georgetown art buyer who has watched a printmaking demonstration at the gallery brings a different understanding of the print they are considering to the acquisition decision. Gallery hours run Tuesday through Sunday, noon to close.