Print club (Philadelphia, Pa.)

Carl Zigrosser served the Print Club in many capacities: juror, advisor, benefactor, author, speaker, and officer. He was an active member from 1941 to 1971.

Art club; Philadelphia, Pa.

Founded 1916 by a group of collectors interested in stimulating an interest in contemporary prints and art work.

Since its founding in 1915, the Print Club has achieved a national reputation and membership. Its purposes are to encourage the appreciation of prints and to provide audiences for the work of contemporary printmakers. The membership has always included both collectors and printmakers; many of the former from the Philadelphia area, the latter from across the United States and Canada. Since its incorporation in 1921 it has been governed by a Board of Governors, from which the officers are chosen, and has been administered by a full-time director. The Club is located at 1614 Latimer Street, Philadelphia, a building it has occupied since 1919 and owned since 1927.

The Print Club's exhibition program includes annual juried shows, travelling exhibitions, and occasional retrospective exhibitions. In 1926 it mounted a Joseph Pennell retrospective. It showed the drawings of Brancusi, Modigliani, and Picasso in 1930, and a group of modern American printmakers in 1936. In the 1940s, the Club conducted master classes under Stanley William Hayter and others. It has published editions of prints by such artists as Frasconi, Kaplan, Paone, Spruance and others. In the 1960s, the Club began a program of printmaking demonstrations in the city's schools called "Prints in Progress." Until 1977, the Club sold on consignment the works of many of its artist members. And, since 1940, the Club has been contributing its purchase prize prints to the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.