Press & Pull: A Legacy of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop surveys the origins, collaboration, and technical innovation of the US’s oldest and continuously operating cooperative workshop. Founded in 1947 by artist, educator, and master printer Robert Blackburn (1920–2003), the Workshop arose from the dissolution of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project (1935–43), which had supported community art centers across the country, including Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center. Blackburn filled the void with the Printmaking Workshop, creating a shared space for racial integration and collective creativity.

Press & Pull traces this history through 38 prints made at the Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, archival ephemera, and video drawn from its archive. Woven into the exhibition are an additional 45 prints that identify historical similarities and differences between the Workshop and printmaking practices in Chicago. This comparative approach offers factors that have contributed to Chicago’s printmaking scene, such as the founding of the South Side Community Art Center, the flight of African Americans from the South and Jews from the Soviet Bloc, the Black Arts Movement, and communal skill sharing cultivated in now-shuttered print shops and contemporary printers’ guilds.

Artists: Ron Adams, Haig Aivazian, Romare Bearden, Camille Billops, McArthur Binion, Robert Blackburn, Margaret Burroughs, Elizabeth Catlett, Ed Clark, Carlos Cortéz, Eldzier Cortor, Chicago Printers Guild, Devraj Dakoji, Raque Ford, Maren Hassinger, Eric Von Haynes, Barbara Jones Hogu, Margo Humphrey, Richard Hunt, Baseera Khan, Tsedaye Makonnen, Kerry James Marshall, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Otto Neals, Richard Powell, Martin Puryear, Mavis Pusey, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Faith Ringgold, Kenny Rivero, Nicholas Sistler, Raoul Varin, Jarrell Wadsworth, June Wayne, Charles White, Michael Kelly Williams, and John Wilson, among others