The 2026 Ewell L. Newman Book Awards were awarded during the annual meeting in New Bedford, MA. These works represent significant scholarly achievement in the field of American historical prints. 

 

Michael Leja, A Flood of Pictures: The Formation of a Picture Culture in the United States. Philadelphia: U Penn 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.

 
 

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Winners of the Ewell L. Newman Book Award, 1989-2024

2025- Tatiana Reinoza for Reclaiming the Americas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023)

2024- Allison M. Stagg for Prints of a New Kind: Political Caricature in the United States, 1789-1828 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023)

2024- Ron Tyler for Texas Lithographs: A Century of History in Images (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023)

2023 – Imperfect History: Curating the Graphic Arts Collection at Benjamin Franklin’s Public Library (Philadelphia, PA: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 2021)

2022 – Georgia Barnhill for Gems of Art on Paper: Illustrated American Fiction and Poetry, 1785-1885 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021)

2021 – Cape Ann Museum, Laid Down on Paper: Printmaking in America, 1800-1865 (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Cape Ann Museum, 2020)

2020 – Dr. Robert Emlen for Imagining the Shakers: How the Visual Culture of Shaker Life was Pictured in the Popular Illustrated Press of Nineteenth-Century America (Clinton, N.Y.: Richard W. Couper Press, 2019)

2019 – Charlotte Rubinstein (Diann Benti, ed.) for Fanny Palmer: The Life and Works of a Currier & Ives Artist (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2018)

2018 – Lauren B. Hewes, Kayla H. Hopper, Laura Wasowicz for Radiant with Color & Art: McLoughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books, 1858-1920 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2017)

2017 – No Award

2016 – Helena E. Wright for The First Smithsonian Collection. The European Engravings of George Perkins Marsh and the Role of Prints in the U.S. National Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2015)

2015 – Michael Twyman for A History of Chromolithography.  Printed Colour for All (London: British Library, 2013)

2014 – Sue Rainey for Creating a World on Paper: Harry Fenn’s Career in Art (Amherst & Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013)

2013 – Erika Piola, ed. for Philadelphia on Stone:  Commercial Lithography in Philadelphia, 1828-1878 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press and Library Company, 2012)

2012 – Amanda Lett, Patricia Hills, Peter John Brownlee, Randy Palmer for Perfectly American. The Art-Union & Its Artists (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Gilcrease Museum, 2011)

2011 – David G. Wright for Domestic and Wild: Peter Moran’s Images of America (Baltimore, Md.: Creo Press, 2010)

2010 – Nancy Finlay for Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880

2009 – Christopher W. Lane for A Panorama of Pittsburgh: Nineteenth-Century Printed Views

2008 – John W. Reps for John Caspar Wild: Painter and Printmaker of Nineteenth-Century Urban America

2007 – Jane R. Pomeroy for Alexander Anderson, 1775-1870, Wood Engraver and Illustrator, and Annotated Bibliography

2006 – Jay T. Last for The Color Explosion: Nineteenth-Century American Lithography

2005 – Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation for American Botanical Prints of Two Centuries

2004 – David Tatham for Winslow Homer and the Pictorial Press

2003 – Joseph Goddu for John James Audubon & Robert Havell, Jr.: Artist’s Proofs for THE BIRDS OF AMERICA

2002 – Gary L. Bunker for From Rail-Splitter to Icon: Lincoln’s Image in Illustrated Periodicals, 1860-1865

2001 – Katharine Martinez and Page Talbot for Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy

2000 – Mark Neely and Harold Holzer for The Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North

1999 – Caroline Mastin Welsh for Adirondack Prints and Printmakers: The Call of the Wild

1998 – Sue Rainey and Roger B. Stein for Shaping the Landscape Image, 1865-1910 : John Douglas Woodward

1997 – Rosemarie L. Tovell for A New Class of Art: The Artist’s Print in Canadian Art, 1877-1920

1996 – Sue Rainey for Creating Picturesque America and Ellen G. Miles for Saint-Memin and the Neoclassical Profile Portrait in America

1995 – Ron Tyler for Prints of the West

1994 – Ann Shelby Blum for Picturing Nature: American 19th Century Zoologial Illustration

1993 – No award

1992 – Bernard F. Reilly, Jr. for American Political Prints, 1766-1876, and Noble E. Cunningham, Jr. for Popular Images of the Presidency, from Washington to Lincoln

1991 – Martha A. Sandweiss, Rick Stewart, and Ben W. Huseman for Eyewitness to War: Prints and Daguerreotypes of the Mexican War, 1846-1848

1990 – John Reps for St. Louis Illustrated: 19th Century Engravings and Lithographs of a Mississippi River Metropolis

1989 – E. McSherry Fowble for Two Centuries of Prints in America and Gloria G. Deak for Picturing America, 1497-1889