More than 300 prints by artists with ties to Mexico donated to the Metropolitan Museum

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a gift from JoAnn Edinburg Pinkowitz and Richard Pinkowitz of more than three hundred prints by Mexican artists or artists working in Mexico. Made between 1890 and 2007, the prints are by famous and lesser-known Mexican artists: from Leopoldo Méndez, Diego Rivera, and Isidoro Ocampo to Adolfo Mexiac, Roberto Montenegro, and Xavier González Iñiguez. Others are by American artists who worked in Mexico and were inspired by its culture, including some associated with the Taller de Gráfica Popular, such as Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, and Howard Cook. JoAnn Edinburg Pinkowitz was an avid collector of prints. She began collecting works by Mexican and other (mostly American) artists who worked in Mexico after the exhibition Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints that was held in 2009 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. JoAnn died in 2022 and it was her wish, and that of her husband Richard Pinkowitz, that the works enter the Metropolitan’s collection.

The donation significantly increases the Department of Drawings and Prints’ existing holdings of Mexican prints and books: it has more than 2,000 examples ranging from the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries. It is thus one of the most important archives of Mexican prints in the United States. The Pinkowitzes also donated in December 2023 31 woodcuts by Chinese printmakers active in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Gu Yuan, Wo Zha, Yan Han, and Chen Yanqiao.

Most of the works in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of Mexican prints were acquired over the course of three decades, from the 1920s to the 1940s, thanks to artist Jean Charlot, who spent years in Mexico and developed close relationships with the curators of the Print Department. The Pinkowitz donation fills important gaps in the existing collection through rare works such as Rio Escondido by Leopoldo Méndez (1948), 10 grabados en madera by Isidoro Ocampo (1941), and Sharecropper by Elizabeth Catlett (1952, printed in 1970). Most of the works are relief prints (woodcuts and linocuts on linoleum) and their subjects mainly address the theme of social justice, reflecting the main concerns of printmakers working in Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century.

“We are grateful to JoAnn and Richard for donating these incredible works on paper to the Met,” said Max Hollein and Marina Kellen, French managing director and museum director.

“The Pinkowitz collection perfectly complements our extensive print collection. JoAnn was well known to our department, where she spent much time enthusiastically exploring our Mexican material. It is an honor to host and exhibit this important group of works from her collection,” said Mark McDonald, curator of the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Met.

Image: Elizabeth Catlett, Mezzadri (1952, published 1968-1970; linocut printed in green and black, 44.5 x 42 cm; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Richard and JoAnn Edinburg Pinkowitz, 2024.

More than 300 prints by artists with ties to Mexico donated to the Metropolitan Museum

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