Fall 2025 exhibition debuts transformative Frankenthaler Foundation gift in dialogue with museum collection.

This fall, The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper, on view September 17–December 14, 2025. The exhibition explores how artists have used printmaking—and works on paper more broadly—as a site for experimentation, improvisation, and aesthetic risk.

The exhibition centers on the pioneering print practice of Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928–2011). Known for her signature “soak-stain” technique in painting, Frankenthaler brought a similar sensibility to printmaking, embracing fluidity, chance, and the variable interaction of materials in her works on paper. Her lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts reflect a dynamic, process-oriented approach—what she has described as “pouring, flooding, spilling, bleeding.”

The presentation marks the debut of a recent gift of 34 works from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, part of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative. In 2023, The Block was one of ten university art museums nationally to receive a portfolio of Frankenthaler’s prints and working proofs, along with funding to support interpretation and public engagement.

“This exhibition exemplifies how a university museum can serve as a catalyst for fresh approaches to scholarship, curation, and teaching,” said Lisa Corrin, Ellen Philips Katz Executive Director of The Block Museum.

Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding places this new acquisition in dialogue with over 30 works from The Block’s permanent collection, highlighting artists who have similarly challenged the boundaries of control and gesture in their artwork. Prints, drawings, and watercolors by artists of Frankenthaler’s close circle, including Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, and David Smith, provide a wider context for Frankenthaler’s contributions to postwar abstraction and printmaking. The conversation expands beyond the historical frame of Frankenthaler’s contemporaries, bringing in artists who have since drawn inspiration from Frankenthaler’s approach—Lynda Benglis and Amy Sillman—as well as artists who have welcomed chance and the unexpected in their artistic practice, such as John Cage, Max Gimblett, and Frankenthaler’s studio assistant Kikuo Saito.

Curated by Stephanie S.E. Lee, 2024–25 Block Museum Graduate Fellow in Art History, and Corinne Granof, Academic Curator, the exhibition draws from in-depth research, including time spent in the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation archives. There, the curators uncovered visual and textual documentation of Frankenthaler’s collaborative print process, insights that shape the presentation of Divertimento (1983), shown alongside a full suite of working proofs.

“As a specialist in prints and drawings, being able to study Frankenthaler’s working proofs up close was transformative,” said Stephanie S.E. Lee. “In many ways, these working proofs show what the editioned print cannot: they are traces of decision-making, experimentation, and artistic dialogue between Frankenthaler, her circle, and the print workshop. That is what we wanted to bring to life in the exhibition.”

The exhibition also reflects The Block’s commitment to works on paper as a core strength of its collection. According to Corinne Granof, “Frankenthaler’s prints disrupt the idea that control is essential to the printmaking process. This exhibition celebrates how artists represented in our collection take risks, collaborate with materials, and embrace the unpredictable—on paper as much as on canvas.”

Exhibition Public Programs

To deepen engagement with Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding, The Block Museum will host a series of public programs that explore the legacy and ongoing relevance of Helen Frankenthaler’s print practice:

• Sept 25, 12:30–1:30pm – Frankenthaler’s World: Collaboration and Printmaking in Postwar America
   A kickoff exploration of the exhibition led by co-curator and graduate fellow Stephanie S.E. Lee, featuring close discussion of selected works, including Tales of Genji IV.
  
  
• Oct 17, 6:00–7:30pm –Exhibition Keynote: Alexander Nemerov on Helen Frankenthaler’s Diversions
   A lecture reflecting on the role of chance and experimentation in Frankenthaler’s work, presented during Northwestern’s Family Weekend.
  
  
• Oct 22, 3:30–4:30pm – Gallery Talk: Each Medium Effects the Other – Cora Chalaby on Helen Frankenthaler
  Frankenthaler scholar Cora Chaleby shares insights on the relationship between painting and printmaking in Frankenthaler’s oeuvre.
  
  
• Oct 30, 3:00–4:00pm – Curator Talk: Frankenthaler’s Circle
  Join us in the gallery for a talk with exhibition co-curator Corinne Granof, Block Museum Academic Curator.
  
  
• Nov 1 & Dec 6, 12:30–1:30pm – Block Student Art Talks!
   Student-led talks offering reflections and new interpretations of the exhibition.
  
  
• Nov 12, 6:00–7:30pm – Printmaking in Process: Anna Kunz, Soo Shin, and Lane Relyea
   A dialogue featuring Prof. Lane Relyea (Northwestern, Art, Theory, Practice) and artists Soo Shin and Anna Kunz, moderated by Stephanie S.E. Lee, on the resonance of Frankenthaler’s work today.

About the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative

Launched in 2018, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Frankenthaler Prints Initiative supports university museums with gifts of prints and working proofs by Frankenthaler, as well as funding for research, teaching, and interpretation. The program reflects the Foundation’s dual mission: to steward Frankenthaler’s legacy and to support the next generation of artists and scholars.

At The Block, this gift has catalyzed new research and learning opportunities. By placing Frankenthaler’s prints in conversation with works from the museum’s holdings, the exhibition underscores The Block’s role as a site for interdisciplinary learning and object-based research.

Exhibition Support
Generous support for the exhibition was provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The exhibition is supported in part by The Alumnae of Northwestern University. The Graduate Fellow is generously supported by The Graduate School (TGS), Northwestern University.

Header Image: Left to right: Helen Frankenthaler, Divertimento, working proof 5, 1983, Divertimento, trial proof 8, 1983, Divertimento, trial proof 4, 1983, Lithographs on paper. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Multiples, Inc., New York. Photographs by Thomas Barratt, courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York.