As one of ten university art museums selected, the UNM Art Museum will receive a group of Helen Frankenthaler prints and a one-time grant of $25,000 to develop a project or program for the study, presentation, and interpretation of the editions. We are excited to utilize these resources to support student education in the visual arts and art history. Grantees are selected based on demonstrated commitments to prints as significant collection areas and teaching tools, according to Elizabeth Smith, Executive Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

This gift to the University of New Mexico Art Museum acknowledges the museum’s distinguished history of collecting prints, photographs and works on paper. It dramatically enriches the museum and will provide our student body and faculty with access to one of the great American artists of the 20^th century.”

-Arif Khan, UNMAM Director

This year marks the second phase of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative. The first cycle was launched in 2018 by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to enrich academic institutions’ collections and resources while promoting scholarly research on Frankenthaler’s contributions to the field of printmaking.

The UNM Art Museum is among the following university art museums to be awarded 2023 Frankenthaler Prints Initiative gifts:

• The Block Museum of Art – Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
• Cantor Arts Center – Stanford University, Stanford, CA
• Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art – Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
• Georgia Museum of Art – University of Georgia, Athens, GA
• Grey Art Gallery – New York University, New York, NY
• Henry Art Gallery – University of Washington, Seattle, WA
• Lowe Art Museum – University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
• North Dakota Museum of Art – University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND
• Syracuse University Art Museum – Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
• University of New Mexico Art Museum – University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM

Helen Frankenthaler, an innovative female artist of her time and an outspoken champion of arts education, is regarded as one of the most important American Abstract Expressionist painters and printmakers of the 20th century. She established and endowed the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to advance her legacy and inspire a new generation of practitioners through philanthropic, educational and research initiatives.

Since becoming active in 2013, the Foundation has continued to strategically expand its program, which includes organizing and supporting significant exhibitions of the artist’s work, fostering new research and publications, advancing educational programs in partnership with arts organizations around the world, and launching groundbreaking initiatives that foster systemic change in the field. As a primary resource on the artist, and a steward of her collection and archive, the Foundation holds an extensive selection of Frankenthaler’s work in a variety of mediums, her collection of works by other artists, and original papers and materials pertaining to her life and work.