Citizen Printer: Guided Exhibition Tour with Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr

Using bold language, graphic typography, and colorful layers, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s letterpress prints vibrate with an intensity that catches the eye and provokes the mind. Curated by design educator Kelly Walters, positions Kennedy’s work in dialogue with Black abolitionist printers across history—from those who posted the first calls to end enslavement in the nineteenth century to those who helped advance the cause for civil rights in the twentieth.

In this tour led by Kennedy himself, you’ll learn how he wields a centuries-old printing technology to build a bridge between the horrors of the past and the challenges of the present—and witness firsthand how he approaches his important subject matter with vitality, humor, and grace. 

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., was working a corporate job when, at nearly forty, he discovered the art of letterpress printing on a tour of Colonial Williamsburg. Kennedy then devoted himself to the craft, earning an MFA in graphic design at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He now operates Kennedy Prints!, a letterpress printshop in Detroit. He has been featured in outlets like Hyperallergic, the New York Times, and the Economist, and he has exhibited in dozens of museums and galleries across the United States, including Poster House, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the libraries of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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