This spring, Corinne Granof, Block Museum Academic Curator and Stephanie S. E. Lee, 2024-25 Art History Graduate Fellow, spent a day at the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York, gathering research for the exhibition Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper, opening at The Block in fall 2025. The visit offered insight into Frankenthaler’s process and helped shape how the museum will present a recent gift of prints by the artist.

At the heart of the exhibition is Divertimento (1983), a vibrant lithograph represented in The Block’s collection by an editioned print and an entire suite of working proofs. “We think we have all of them,” Granof noted. “Each one shows a step in the evolution—how she played with color, changed orientation, and even tested different types of paper.”

The Foundation’s archives brought that process into even sharper focus. Among the most striking finds was a timeline written by a master printer who collaborated with Frankenthaler. “It tracked his travel to New York to meet with her, the supplies he picked up, the studio tests they ran—it’s both practical and poetic,” Granof said. “You get a real sense of the labor and thought that goes into making a single print.”

The archives also held photographs of Frankenthaler working in the print studio. The exhibition may feature these images to offer visitors a visual reference for the complex, collaborative, and physical nature of printmaking.

Research extended beyond Divertimento to Tales of Genji (1998), another print featured in the exhibition. Personal photographs from Frankenthaler’s trip to Japan offered glimpses into the artist’s experience abroad. While not direct source material, these images provide valuable cultural context and may help visitors consider how environment and travel shaped Frankenthaler’s aesthetic.

One surprise came from the artist’s personal library. Housed in a space used for classes and research, the collection includes exhibition catalogs, art criticism, poetry, novels by friends like Erica Jong, and even a set of vintage microwave cookbooks. “Apparently, Frankenthaler was friends with Barbara Kafka, who was a pioneer in writing about microwave cooking,” Granof said. “It was so mundane and human. The books really situate her in her era.”

This glimpse into the artist’s full life—one that included poetry, friendships, food, and experimentation—reinforces a key curatorial choice: to show all the working proofs from Divertimento together, offering a rare view into Frankenthaler’s creative process. “Stephanie really pushed for that,” Granof shared. “And it’s so right. It brings people into the work—not just the final image, but the thinking, the trying, the deciding.” Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding is not only a presentation of prints—it’s an invitation to consider how artists test boundaries and embrace uncertainty. As Granof put it: “There’s a lot of mystery around how artists work. This show lets you look over Frankenthaler’s shoulder a bit.”