BATON ROUGE, LA.- The Louisiana State University Museum of Art opened the exhibit Paths to the Press: Printmaking and American Women Artists, 1910-1960 through January 7, 2007. Organized and circulated by the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University Open July 29, 2006 through January 7, 2007.

Paths to the Press: Printmaking and American Women Artists, 1910-1960 is the first major exhibition to survey women artists' contributions to printmaking in the United States during the first half of the 20th century.

Paths to the Press features 100 works by 80 female artists, including Mary Cassatt, Louise Nevelson, and Elizabeth Catlett.

"This exhibition provides a balanced representation of internationally and nationally recognized artists, well-known regional artists and underappreciated and relatively unknown printmakers," according to Elizabeth Seaton, assistant curator at the Beach Museum of Art. "These artists' collective contributions to printmaking were substantial and have yet to be fully detailed and interpreted."

The exhibition begins its exploration during the second etching revival, which was driven by Bertha Jacques' founding in 1910 of the Chicago Society of Etchers. It examines women who made major contributions to color printmaking during the first decades of the century, including Blanche Lazzell, Helen Hyde and Bertha Lum. It looks at how the establishment of print societies, the WPA and printmaking programs in teaching institutions during the 1920s and 1930s helped women such as Peggy Bacon, Constance Forsyth and Elizabeth Olds flourish as printmakers. It also examines women's involvement in post WWII university printmaking programs and independent presses. The exhibition ends its survey in 1960, when the flourishing of print publishers offered new production and marketing opportunities for artists of both sexes.

The prints in the exhibition include objects drawn from Kansas State's Beach Museum of Art; Northwestern University's Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art; the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts; the University of Kansas'Spencer Museum of Art; and the collection of Belverd and Marian Needles, Winnetka, Illinois.