Frankenthaler’s World: Collaboration and Printmaking in Postwar America

Join us in the gallery for a talk with co-curator Stephanie S.E. Lee, Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellow at the Morgan Library & Museum and 2024–25 Block Museum Art History Graduate Fellow.

This event kicks off the exhibition with an in-depth look at two of Frankenthaler’s works created more than a decade apart: Divertimento (1983) and Tales of Genji IV (1998).

Together, we’ll explore how close looking at these works reveals surprising connections—to Italian classical music, an 11th-century Japanese novel, and the spirit of artistic collaboration that shaped Frankenthaler’s process.

Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper, on view September 17-December 14, 2025, explores Frankenthaler’s dynamic printmaking practice—rooted in chance, accident, and material alchemy—alongside works on paper by her contemporaries and other artists from The Block’s collection.

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Block Curator Talks explore the ideas behind our exhibitions with the Block team. These talks offer a chance to ask questions, share thoughts, and connect more deeply with the art on view.

Participation level – light, participants may choose to share thoughts and questions during the program.

Programs are open to all, on a first-come first-served basis. RSVPs are not required, but are appreciated.

Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper is curated by Stephanie S.E. Lee, 2024–25 Art History Graduate Fellow and Corinne Granof, Academic Curator, at The Block Museum of Art. Generous support for the exhibition was provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The exhibition is supported in part by The Alumnae of Northwestern University. The Graduate Fellow is generously supported by The Graduate School (TGS), Northwestern University.

Stephanie S.E. Lee is a PhD Candidate in Art History at Northwestern and co-curator of Spilling, Pouring, Bleeding. She specializes on the history of printmaking, with a particular focus on early twentieth-century art between France and East Asia. Before joining the Block, she held positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Rijksmuseum, and the Newberry Library. Lee is currently a Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan, where she is working on another Helen Frankenthaler exhibition.

Images:

1) Frankenthaler at work in her studio in 1969. Ernst Haas Hulton Archive/ Courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and Getty Images.

2) Helen Frankenthaler, Tales of Genji IV, 1998, Twenty-one color woodcut from 12 woodblocks, 47 x 42 inches (119.4 x 106.7 cm). Ernst Haas Hulton Archive/ Copyright 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

3) Helen Frankenthaler, Divertimento, 1983. Lithograph on paper, 37 1/2 x 27 1/4 in. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, 2023.24.6. Copyright 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Multiples, Inc., New York

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