Jordan Schnitzer Gallery
Dedicated to exhibiting works on paper by emerging and established artists, the Jordan Schnitzer Gallery will host exhibitions, lectures, and public programming related to papermaking inside Dieu Donné’s home at the historic Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Jordan Schnitzer Gallery will be celebrated with a launch event on Wednesday, October 24, 2018.
Jordan Schnitzer states, “I am honored to have the gallery at Dieu Donné named for me, as someone who loves and promotes artists who make work on paper to further their artistic vision. Dieu Donné is the national leader in helping artists to create and use paper in their artmaking process. For over 500 years, art makers have made prints because of the magic created when ink, paint, and paper come together. I look forward to Dieu Donné’s many more decades of success.”
Susan Gosin, Founder and Co-Chair of Dieu Donné, remarks, “Jordan’s continued dedication to Dieu Donné exemplifies our legacy as one of New York City’s most significant cultural organizations. The Jordan Schnitzer Gallery will inspire others to connect with our 40+ year history and ensure that our gallery and studios remain a vital home for many more generations of artists working in handmade paper.”
At age fourteen, Jordan Schnitzer bought his first work of art from his mother’s Portland, Oregon contemporary art gallery, prompting his lifelong avocation as a collector. He began collecting contemporary prints and multiples in earnest in 1988. Today, Jordan Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation collections exceed 13,000 works and include many of today’s most important contemporary artists. The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation collection is growing to become the country’s largest private print collection, generously lending work to qualified institutions, organizing over one hundred exhibitions, and placing artwork in over 150 museums.
Jordan Schnitzer is president of Harsch Investment Properties, a privately owned real estate investment company based in Portland, Oregon, which owns and manages office, multi-tenant industrial, multi-family, and retail properties in six western states.
On view in the Jordan Schnitzer Gallery is an archival exhibition of paper works created at Dieu Donné. The exhibition was curated by Jennifer Farrell, Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2018 Survey of Dieu Donné Art in Paper: Selections from the Archive
prices available upon request
Curator’s Statement
In an era where the term “paperless” is increasingly part of common parlance, a celebration of paper is a welcome respite. Paper has been in existence for centuries, and as a material it seems to possess endless possibility.
The creation and processes of creating paper, especially the handmade paper produced at Dieu Donné and other paper mills, requires its own time as it is a slow process with various stages, steps, materials, and equipment. Handmade paper is an art, one that takes on different characteristics, properties, and forms to reflect the creativity, skill, ideas, and excitement of the artists, paper makers, and publishers in whose hands this process thrives.
Dieu Donné, the premier paper mill in the United States and a vital center for artistic production since its founding in 1976, has inspired artists such as Jim Hodges (who described it as a “perfect laboratory where ideas and materials mix in a sloshy slippery world of possibilities”) to achieve new discoveries. This survey exhibition shows artists of various eras with different concerns, methods, aesthetics, styles, processes and intentions, all of whom found the freedom, support and expertise at Dieu Donné to pursue a unifying goal: to pursue artistic excellence through experimentation.
Some artists, such as Richard Tuttle, have engaged paper over decades and it is fundamental to their process, while for others their primary association is with different means, such as sculpture, installation art, or painting. As with Tuttle, James Siena and Arlene Shechet have made multiple projects at Dieu Donné, each time pursuing a new path while building on previous experiences and knowledge.
This diversity is reflected in works, some of which are three-dimensional (even suspended from the ceiling as in Alan Shields’s Me in 3D), some that incorporate photography and photo-based elements as in Glenn Ligon’s work. Others artists such as Suzanne McClelland and B. Wurtz reflect an engagement with motifs explored in other forms, such as installation and sculpture. Some work is unique, others are examples of an edition. All of the art reflects the spirit of collaboration, the excitement of experimentation, and the myriad possibilities inherent in the process of hand papermaking.
—Jennifer Farrell, Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Musuem of Art
