The American Historical Print Collectors Society is pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Newman Book and Essay Awards. These works represent significant scholarly achievement in the field of American historical prints. Learn more about the Newman Publication Awards

 

2026 Ewell L. Newman Book Awards

Michael Leja, A Flood of Pictures: The Formation of a Picture Culture in the United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025. 400 pages, 142 illustrations.

Michael Leja’s book is an ambitious effort to chart the formation of a mass culture of pictures in the United States during the years after 1830. Looking at production, consumption, and demand, he addresses the innovations and experimentation that contributed to the rise of multiple media that reached new heights in the public’s reception of images. Using case studies to manage the massive transformation in the production of images, he presents detailed information to support his thesis. Several reviewers noted in particular the success of his chapter on photography and mezzotint and his bringing together other complex developments to suggest new ways of looking at American historical prints.

 

 

 

Britany Salsbury and Erin Benay, Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community. The Cleveland Museum of Art distributed by Yale University Press, 2025. 176 pages, 212 illustrations.

This publication relates to the “Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community” exhibition at the 2025 Cleveland Museum of Art. Both efforts presented significant new information concerning a group of artists affiliated with Karamu House, a settlement house and community center. The artists shared an interest in printmaking and a commitment to integrating art into the life of Cleveland’s Black community. Their collective, Karamu Artists Inc., was founded in 1940, and it led to these artists and their work receiving local and national attention, including connections to the WPA Fine Art Program and the Harlem Renaissance. The five essays in the catalog enlarge upon these developments up to the 1960s and offer commentaries on Karamu’s relationship with Modernism and a biographical exploration of the career of one artist, Hughie Lee-Smith. There is also an exhibition checklist, and a catalog raisonné of prints by Karamu Artists Inc from the 1930s and ’40s. The catalog is illustrated with very high-quality reproductions.

2026 Lois W. Newman Essay Awards

Essay appearing in the AHPCS journal Imprint

Sarah Weatherwax, “Matthias Weaver: the Reluctant Lithographer,” Imprint 48:II (Fall 2023)

This highly engaging article uses a rare primary source – the diary of a working lithographer — to reflect on the realities of artistic creation in Philadelphia’s lithographic workshops during the early 1840s. Although the individual entries are rather brief, in the capable analytical hands of Sarah Weatherwax, they provide a rich and nuanced understanding of the career of an early nineteenth-century lithographer. She connects Weaver to named individuals and Philadelphia institutions. Well contextualized, it offers a good model for how to analyze a diary for publication.

Essays appearing in other journals and exhibition catalogues

Erin Benay, “Peripheral Prints: Karamu House and the Rise of African American Art in the Midwest,” Panorama (Spring 2024, 10.1)

This essay, which appeared in the online journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, is a lengthier treatment of material that appears in the related CMA exhibition and catalog, which won the 2026 Ewell L. Newman Book Award. Reviewers found this longer narrative covered in more detail the history and context for the Black art world in Cleveland from the 1930s to the present. Benay argues that the social and economic mechanisms fostered at Karamu House not only provided the foundation for the professionalization and ultimate success of Black artists, particularly printmakers, in Cleveland, but also developed the middle-class market for Black art. These successes made Cleveland an important destination for artists who traveled across the country. Benay focuses on the role of linocuts, which did not require an expensive press, and she notes the relative affordability of these prints during the Depression years and beyond.

Laurel Garber, “At Work in Print: Cassatt and the “Sentient Hand”.” In Mary Cassatt at Work, edited by Laurel Garber and Jennifer Thompson. Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Distributed by Yale University Press, 2024: 149-162.

Garber’s essay for an exhibition catalogue, Mary Cassatt at Work, explores the artist’s working methods as shown through her technique, particularly her use of multiple intaglio processes and her attention to developing her images through multiple states of her prints. Cassatt recognized the value of her trial proofs by signing them, and they reflect the imaginative and iterative processes she employed. The essay connects her actions on the plate with her subject matter, mainly domestic interiors and her women subjects’ interiority. Although she worked in France, Cassatt was an American artist and her subjects often were her own family, also Americans. Garber presents a good discussion of the Etching Revival in Paris during the early 1860s, and her thoughtful analysis and comparisons of proofs and states contribute to her deep understanding and exposition of Cassatt’s printed oeuvre. Making good use of previous scholarship, Garber’s essay represents a new synthesis. She offers a sympathetic and comprehensive understanding of the intersections of Cassatt’s compositional strengths with her working methods and subject interests. Reviewers applauded Garber for finding novel ways for readers to engage with a body of work that is quite well known.