Although not affiliated with an art museum, as are some print clubs in other cities, the WPC has always been guided by a distinguished group of advisors including, at its founding, Jacob Kainen, a New York artist who became Curator of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian; Alan Fern, then Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Library of Congress; Adelyn Breeskin of the National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA - now the Smithsonian American Art Museum); and Victor Carlson of the Baltimore Museum of Art. The roster of advisors has changed over the years, and these prominent members of the local art community have played an important role in the success of the club, helping to facilitate its programs and ensure its continuity.

Perhaps because of its institutional autonomy, the WPC was able to pursue its own creative agenda, commissioning posters and prints from emerging local artists, arranging printmaking demonstrations and symposia, sponsoring tours of public and private collections, and mounting regular exhibitions. Its first exhibition, in 1965, was held in the gallery of Washington's 16th Street Jewish Community Center, directed by Jo Ann Lewis (now an arts writer for The Washington Post); and a poster commemorating the exhibition was commissioned from George O'Connell, then on the faculty of the University of Maryland.

Among the club's memorable past undertakings were a series of biennial "High School Graphics" exhibitions, begun in 1969 and co-sponsored by the NCFA's educational outreach program, known as "Discover Graphics." These exhibitions, designed to foster printmaking in the D.C. high schools and stimulate interest in the graphic arts among the city's youth, awarded prizes to the most promising students. Some of those judging the exhibitions, such as Sam Gilliam and Percy Martin, are featured in our current exhibition.

To celebrate its twentieth anniversary, the WPC began reproducing original prints by local artists on the cover of its quarterly publication, at first only twice a year, but now a feature of each Quarterly issue. The guidelines for selecting Quarterly cover artists emphasize the importance of hand-pulled prints (i.e., prints created from an original matrix, such as an etching plate, lithographic stone or carved wood block). The selected artist should have a strong body of work in this medium, or have printmaking as a primary (though not necessarily the only) medium. Once selected for the Quarterly, the artist provides a statement about his or her work, and an informative article on the artist is included in each issue. Up until last year, this entire editorial and selection process was carried out by artist Terry Parmelee, whose woodcut, Formalities, graced the front and back cover of the first illustrated issue in the fall of 1984.

We are fortunate to have several master printmakers represented among the first decade of Quarterly covers, including Un'ichi Hiratsuka, Jacob Kainen, Lynd Ward, and Prentiss Taylor. Artists and printmakers such as these made a significant contribution in establishing Washington as an active and vibrant fine arts community in the late twentieth century and in inspiring - as teachers and mentors - a new generation of printmakers, several of whom appear in this exhibition. Ranging in subject and style from autobiographical content and whimsy to abstraction, the prints exhibited here demonstrate their artists’ commitment to the graphic arts, as well as the technical mastery required to achieve such vivid and striking personal expressions.

In the 1990s, the print club transferred its cover art prints to the Georgetown University Library's Special Collections Division under the supervision of Joseph A. Haller, S.J., one of the club's advisors and, as Curator of Prints, architect of Georgetown's extensive collection of twentieth-century American prints. The collection of WPC cover prints was acquired through the generosity of the artists, either as outright gifts or for a fraction of the retail price, thus making it possible to assemble an impressive array of extraordinary works produced in and around Washington during the last two decades.