KANSAS CITY, MO.- The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City announced that it has established an archive for The Lawrence Lithography Workshop, which, under the guidance of owner and master printer Michael Sims, has become nationally renowned, collaborating with more than 200 artists from across the United States since it opened in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1979. To launch the establishment of The Lawrence Lithography Workshop Archive at the Nelson-Atkins, C. Richard Belger and Nelson-Atkins Board of Trustees Chair Evelyn Craft Belger, along with the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation, generously gave the museum 105 lithographs in 2023. In early 2024, the museum purchased 249 more, as well as a selection of key preparatory works. Combined, the gifts and purchases created a repository of lithographs by 55 artists—including many historically under-represented artists of color and women—printed at The Lawrence Lithography Workshop between 1980 and 2018.
“We are so grateful for the passion and commitment Dick and Evelyn have demonstrated toward the workshop through the years, culminating in this generous gift,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. “The Belgers recognized early on what a tremendous asset the workshop is to Kansas City and the important role Mike served in the ecosystem of contemporary printmaking.”
As a college student in Michigan, Sims fell in love with the process of lithography and began teaching it at the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1971. Seven years later, he moved to Chicago to work as an assistant at the esteemed Landfall Press and returned to Lawrence a year later to open The Lawrence Lithography Workshop. The business flourished for 18 years before Sims relocated the shop to Sunland Park, New Mexico. While Sims was in New Mexico, Dick Belger contacted him, urging him to relocate to Kansas City. Since 2001, the shop has operated out of the light-filled space in the Belger Crane Yard Studios at 20th and Tracy Avenue.
“Our vision was to leave Mike alone and allow him to create what he wanted to create in his studio, and his success speaks for itself,” said Belger. “He’s done really well.”
“The Lawrence Lithography Workshop Archive at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art ensures the legacy of this influential print shop, the artists with whom it worked, and the community it fostered. Artists as diverse as the subject matter and techniques respresented in their prints have come from around the corner and across the country to work with The Lawrence Lithography Workshop. While some are well-versed in printmaking, others are new to lithography and interested in exploring its possbilities. Many have returned again and again—a testament to the shop’s reputation and master printer Michael Sims’s expert guidance,” notes Stephanie Fox Knappe, Sanders Sosland Senior Curator of Global Modern and Contemporary Art and Head of the American Art Department at the Nelson-Atkins.
To celebrate this archive, the museum is mounting The Lawrence Lithography Workshop: Highlights from the Archive, an exhibition that opens on December 21, 2024 in the American Galleries. Comprising selections from the newly established archive, the exhibition spotlights the creativity, talent, and collaborative spirit synonymous with The Lawrence Lithography Workshop. Among the hundreds of artists who collaborated with Michael Sims at the shop are the following, whose prints are on view in this exhibition: Leroy Allen, Anthony Baab, Paul Brach, Robert Julius Brawley, Suzi Davidoff, Joan Foth, Robert Green, Marcie Miller Gross, Dennis Helm, Edward Henderson, Tom Hück, Benito Huerta, Luis Alfonso Jiménez, Michael Krueger, Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton, Zigmunds Priede, Warren Rosser, Miriam Schapiro, Roger Yukata Shimomura, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Robert Stackhouse, Akio Takamori, Patti Warashina, and Andrzej Zieliński. Quotations from many of these artists along with Sims are included in the exhibition, underscoring their collaborative relationship. The Lawrence Lithography Workshop: Highlights from the Archive will be on view through June 22, 2025.
