Syracuse University

Free and open to the public. Contact 212-826-0320 or lubin@syr.edu for more information.

"Sylvan Cole and American Prints" is an exhibition of more than 30 prints by important American printmakers including Milton Avery, Thomas Hart Benton, Robert Motherwell and Grant Wood. It was Cole's influence as an internationally known art dealer who specialized in the art of the print that led to the boom in the prominence of print art.

Sylvan Cole, whom The New York Times called "the doyen of dealers in American Prints," was a pre-eminent New York City dealer of American prints during the last half of the 20th Century. The artists who created these works were represented by the influential Associated American Artists Gallery (AAA), which was directed by Cole from  1958 until the early 1980s. After he founded the Sylvan Cole Gallery in 1984, Cole continued to represent many of these artists, or their estates, until his own death in 2005.

Cole's career began just after the Second World War, when he helped to make fine art prints and printmaking an important component of the national art scene. He sold the work of numerous significant artists including James McNeill Whistler, Milton Avery, Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis and Robert Motherwell. He also sold artwork to most of the important American museum collections including the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of Art.

In 1987, Cole and several other print dealers help found the International Fine Print Dealers Association, an organization that he led for several years in the mid-1990s.  Today, the IFPDA is still guided by the mission and vision that he and fellow dealers Dorothy Schneiderman, Paul McCarron, Martin Gordon, and Mary Ryan, established for the association.

Curated by Domenic Iacono, Director of the Syracuse University Art Galleries and longtime associate and friend of Mr. Cole, the exhibition has been developed from the extensive print holdings of the art collection at Syracuse.  Mr. Cole had long been an advisor to the University regarding the development of the print collection.