The 2026 Lois W. Newman Essay Awards were awarded during the annual meeting in New Bedford. The awards recognizes shorter works published in journals and edited volumes, including exhibition catalogues and digital formats, that represent significant scholarly achievement in the field of American historical prints.

 

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.

 

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Past Winners of the Lois W. Newman Essay Award

2025- Marina Wells, “Printing Whaling Masculinity in A Shoal of Sperm Whale,” The New England Quarterly (2024) Vol. 97, No. 4, pp. 551-576.

2024- Richard M. Candee, “‘One of the coming artists of America,’ Rollin Caughey, Artist-Illustrator, 1880-1884,” Imprint, Vol. 47, no 1 (Spring 2022), 7-21.

2024- Michael P. Conzen, “Rollin Caughey, County History View Sketcher to Metropolitan Newspaper Artist, 1884-1921,” Imprint, Vol. 47, no 1 (Spring 2022), 22-42.

 

Image credit: https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/45507