The IFPDA FoundationViewing Rooms

2026

Degas on Paper: Support/Subject/Media/Meaning

October 14, 2026 · 12:00 – 1:00 PM ET · Online

Presented by Print Council of America

Edward Degas, 'Bather Stepping into a Tub', ca. 1890. Pastel and charcoal on blue laid paper, mounted at perimeter on backing board.
Edward Degas, 'Bather Stepping into a Tub', ca. 1890. Pastel and charcoal on blue laid paper, mounted at perimeter on backing board.H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

Register

Speaker

  • Michelle Foa — Fellow, Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Once I am inside my studio, what use is my mind? I have my model, my pencil, my paper, my paints. My mind doesn’t interest me.” So Degas reportedly commented to a close friend, a succinct expression of the pivotal importance to him of working on paper with a variety of media. Paper was the most common surface on which the artist produced his consistently experimental and innovative work, from the variety of printmaking techniques he employed to his use of pastel, different kinds of paint, chalk, charcoal, pencil, and the relatively little-studied but remarkable group of photographs he produced late in his career. This lecture will explore the fascinating diversity of Degas’s works on paper, the important role that paper played not just in the making but the meaning of his pictures, and the many significant but long-overlooked connections between his subjects and the materials and processes he used to render them. In so doing, this talk will illuminate the essential place of experimentation on paper in Degas’s corpus and will uncover a set of interests and practices that position his paper-based works in an entirely new light.

*Michelle Foa*, 2026-27 Fellow, Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Associate Professor of Art History, Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University; Vice President, National Committee for the History of Art; Editorial Board Member, The Art Bulletin; Programs Chair, Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art; Author, Edgar Degas and the Matter of Art (forthcoming), Yale University Press

  1. María de Los Angeles drawing on a screen at Sparkle Taffy, in Hamden CT.

    2026OnlineUpcoming

    Print, Cut, Layer, Repeat: Joyce Kozloff, María de Los Angeles, and Judith Solodkin in Conversation

    October 30, 2026 · 12:00 – 1:00 PM ET

    Joyce Kozloff, María de Los Angeles and Judith Solodkin

    How does a drawing become a print—and how does a print continue to evolve long after it leaves the press? Bringing together artist Joyce Kozloff, artist María de Los Angeles, and master printer Judith Solodkin, this conversation traces the creative possibilities that emerge through collaboration, experimentation, and reinvention across generations of printmakers. The discussion begins with Kozloff's groundbreaking lithographs produced at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in the early 1970s and her decades-long collaboration with Judith Solodkin, the first woman to graduate from Tamarind's Master Printer program and founder of SOLO Impression Inc., as they reflect on the collaborative process of fine art lithography, in which an artist's marks on stone, plate, or film are translated into a printable matrix through successive proofs and layers of color. As drawing becomes editionable, the print workshop becomes a place of dialogue, investigation, and technical discovery. The conversation will consider printmaking not simply as a medium but as a way of thinking—one rooted in collaboration, revision, and continual transformation. By bringing together a pioneering master printer, an artist whose formative lithographic experiments shaped an interdisciplinary career, and an emerging artist expanding the possibilities of graphic art today, the panel highlights the enduring vitality of drawing and printmaking. Moderated by Elisa Germán, Lunder Curator of Works on Paper and Whistler Studies, Colby College Museum of Art

  3. Tiffany Studios (American, 1902–32). Design for interior, First Presbyterian Church, Poughkeepsie, New York (detail), ca. 1906-08. Transparent and opaque watercolor, and graphite on transparent paper.

    2026OnlineUpcoming

    Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany

    October 27, 2026 · 12:00 – 1:00 PM ET

    Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen

    Join Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, The Met’s Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts, for a behind the scenes webinar on the stories and surprises behind the exhibition *Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany*. The dazzling stained-glass windows, lamps, mosaics, and interiors from the studios of the visionary American artist Louis Comfort Tiffany—hallmarks of the Gilded Age—began as drawings created by the many talented designers in Tiffany’s studios. Designing the Gilded Age: Drawings from the Studios of Louis C. Tiffany showcases rare design drawings to take us behind the scenes of the studios where the drawings were made and ultimately transformed into enduring works of art. Intended for commissions dating from the mid-1880s through the 1920s in the U.S. and internationally, the nearly 120 luminous watercolor drawings present the first step in the artistic process for interiors and decorations for the grand mansions, civic and sacred spaces, and other buildings created during America’s Gilded Age, the post–Civil War era that saw an unprecedented accumulation of wealth. The featured drawings, all from The Met collection, have never before been studied in depth, and the exhibition celebrates the decades-long conservation initiative that restored them to their full beauty. Along with new insights into the artists’ process and design inspiration, the drawings offer a unique opportunity to peel back the layers of some of the most heralded creations produced by Tiffany's legendary studios.