Print Club of Cleveland Fine Print Fair Returns to the CMA Atrium

April 16 – 19^th the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Ames Family Atrium will host the Print Club of Cleveland’s 41st annual Fine Print Fair. The festivities begin with a preview party for ticketed guests on the evening of Thursday, April 16, before the fair opens to the public and runs through April 19. With the exception of the preview party, admission is free, making this annual event a must for seasoned collectors, curious newcomers, and anyone who delights in the enduring appeal of fine prints.

Each year, the museum’s works-on-paper curators bring together fifteen dealers from across the country, offering everything from Old Master prints to contemporary works. Fifteen seems to be the fair’s magic number—large enough to provide impressive variety, yet intimate enough to avoid an overwhelming sale. The fair features many returning dealers, such as Cleveland’s own Verne Gallery specializing in contemporary Japanese prints and works by American artists who have lived and worked in Japan. Verne will be highlighting works by Sarah Brayer, a Rochester, NY native who has lived in Japan since 1979. Sarah has become deeply involved in making paperworks, a process in which an image is formed by pouring pigmented paper pulp onto a bamboo screen. One of these works, Nine Umbrellas will be offered by Verne at the fair.

There is one exciting newcomer to the fair this year —Chicago’s Process/Process. Process/Process, owned by Jessica Cochran and Angee Lennard, has been in business for nearly two years, though the founders have known one another for over fifteen. Having met when Cochran was a curator at the Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago and Lennard the founder and director of Spudnik Press Cooperative, their shared commitment to printmaking and contemporary art grew into a lasting friendship over the years. They both recognized they were professionally and creatively ready to embark on something new, and that their complementary skillsets as a curator and printmaker could make something work. States Cochran, “Most importantly, aside from each bringing our own interests and experiences to Process/Process, we both share a core belief that prints bring an important dimension to the art community in Chicago and the art world beyond.  To make a print with an artist, and to bring it to market, is a very special opportunity not only for the artists with whom we work, but for us as printer/publishers: at every step, our collaborations with artists are attentive, exploratory and, we hope, uncompromising to their ideas.”

Process/Process will be bringing works by Chicago artists Mari Eastman, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, and Alice Tippit, among others. Included in this selection will be Guerrero-Maciá’s Poppy series of screenprints just released this month which animate the artist’s current fascination with flowers, at the precipice of abstraction. For Guerrero-Maciá, an artist working in the expanded fields of painting and textiles, to work in print became an exercise in “letting the way inform the outcome.” Also included are a woodblock print from Mari Eastman’s 2025 Fox series inspired by Japanese woodcuts and the print-based works of Edvard Munch and Alice Tippit’s Surrealist “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” style print Flute, 2024.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Fine Print Fair will also welcome back Pia Gallo, a New York dealer specializing in Old Master prints dating as far back as the 16th century. At this year’s Fair, Pia Gallo will feature a rare woodcut by Giuseppe Scolari (Italian, 1562–1607), an artist to whom only nine original woodcuts are attributed. Scolari designed and cut his own blocks, and this work, Abduction of Proserpina with Pluto (1590–1607), is his only known mythological subject. Ms. Gallohas been a private art dealer since 1981 and a publisher of numerous illustrated catalogues. Her firm is dedicated to the research, acquisition, sale, and appraisal of fine old master and modern prints and drawings.

Another welcome return is Susan Teller Gallery, rejoining the fair after a two-year hiatus. Specializing in American works on paper from the 1920s through the 1950s, the gallery is known for dealing in works spanning the Ashcan School, Urban and Industrial Realism, and Modernism. Teller is especially eager to present works by Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994), the American artist whose estate she has represented for more than two decades. Among the highlights is The Ainsworth Children from Dehner’s Life on the Farm series (1940–45), a drawing that records her years with husband David Smith at their Bolton Landing farm on Lake George. The work is a rare example of Dehner’s earlier figurative period, before she turned fully toward abstraction. With many works from this series held by Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, New York, the opportunity to see one in Cleveland where Dehner’s work is well known and deeply appreciated is exciting.

Teller is equally enthusiastic about offering three linocuts by Cleveland African-American artist William E. Smith (1913–1997): Wash Day, Pay Day, and One Clear Day from the late 1930s-early 1940s. She noted that it has been two decades since the gallery has had this many prints by Smith available at once. About Pay Day, Smith wrote, “I caught all this from a boy who came into the studio and spread his happiness all over the place when he drew his first pay from his first job.” When Smith was twelve, he left Chattanooga, TN for Cleveland and met the founders of Karamu House, one of the nation’s preeminent Black community art centers. Karamu aided him financially and opened him to an abundance of creative possibilities. Within this environment, Smith worked alongside graduates of the Cleveland Art Institute and eventually taught at Karamu until 1940. It’s especially fitting that these linocuts return to Cleveland where the inspiration was rooted.

I would be remiss to not mention the fair’s remaining print dealers: Armstrong Fine Art, Chicago, IL; Joel R. Bergquist Fine Arts, Nashville, TN; Blue Acier inc., Tampa, FL; C.G. Boerner, New York, NY: Center Street Studio, Milton Village, MA; Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia, PA; Conrad R. Graeber Fine Art, Riderwood, MD; Georgia Kellman Works on Paper, New York, NY; Paramour Fine Arts, Franklin, MI; Solway Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; and VanDeb Editions, Long Island City, NY. Each of these dealers offer a different perspective on printmaking and the market for works on paper, and their varied offerings will add depth and vitality to the fair. I’m especially looking forward to seeing the woodblock prints of Ruth Hogan (American, b. 1943) at Paramour, whose works are equally vibrant in both color and subject matter, as well as Georgia Kellman’s selection of French prints from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including examples of mezzotint and pochoir.

Fairgoers can also enjoy live printmaking demonstrations and try their hand at making their own prints on Saturday, April 18, and Sunday April 19^th, each day from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The demonstrations will be provided by the Cleveland Institute of Art, Kent State University School of Art, The Morgan Conservatory, and Zygote Press.

The four-day extravaganza is organized by a dedicated volunteer committee led by first-year chair Jerold Smith, who has worked tirelessly to secure sponsors, coordinate the opening preview party, support participating dealers, and oversee the many details that bring the fair to life. A passionate print collector, Smith served on the committee for two years before stepping into the role of chair. The committee also oversees the annual raffle print, with proceeds benefiting the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Prints and Drawings department. This year’s print, donated by one of the fair’s dealers Oehme Graphics, is a white-line watercolor woodblock monoprint Evening Quiet by Nancy Friese, a RISD professor and lively printmaker. The work is framed by Frames Unlimited in Shaker Heights, whose contribution reflects its support as a 2026 Lithographers Sponsor of the Fair. Raffle tickets may be purchased in person throughout the weekend or online in advance, with the winning entry drawn at the close of the fair on Sunday.

The Fine Print Fair was established in 1984 and is the Print Club of Cleveland’s annual benefit to support and enrich the print collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. During the fair, you can browse and shop one of the nation’s largest and most comprehensive displays of fine prints. Whether a seasoned collector or newcomer, come enjoy the annual tradition in its 41^st year and perhaps leave with a memorable acquisition or a handmade print of your own from the weekend’s demonstrations.

2026 Fine Print Fair at the CMA Atrium
April 16 – April 19, 2026
Ames Family Atrium, The Cleveland Museum of Art

Friday, April 17: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Saturday, April 18: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Sunday, April 19: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Ticketed Preview Party – Thursday April 16, 5:30 – 8 p.m.