« Return to news

CU Art Museum trying to raise $1.25M for 'Sharkive' print collection

May 19, 2016 | In the Press

From Daily Camera (http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_29911616/cu-art-museum-trying-raise-1-25m-sharkive)

The University of Colorado Art Museum is trying to raise $1.25 million to purchase and manage "The Sharkive," a collection of 40 years of printmaking collaborations between various artists and Shark's Ink in Lyons.

The museum is starting the fundraising effort with a $750,000 commitment from the Bebe and Crosby Kemper Foundation, according to a university news release. The university wants to raise a total of $2 million.

Master printer Bud Shark and his wife Barbara opened Shark's Lithography in downtown Boulder in 1976. More than 160 artists from the United States and Europe collaborated there.

The couple moved the studio to Lyons in the late 1990s and renamed it Shark's Ink. Artists who have worked in the studio include John Buck, Enrique Chagoya, Red Grooms, Jane Hammond, Robert Kushner, Hung Liu and Betty Woodman.

Prints made with Shark's Ink are in a number of private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the Library of Congress and Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo.

"The archive is extremely important to Barbara and me," said Bud Shark in a statement. "It will be wonderful to have the Sharkive preserved at the (CU Art Museum) where it will stay in Colorado and be accessible to students, scholars and anyone who is interested in the printing process."

The CU Art Museum already has a rich collection of prints that spans the 16th century to today.

The Sharkive includes 700 signed, limited-edition prints and more than 2,000 related materials.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the CU Art Museum," Sandra Firmin, the museum's director, said in a statement. "Prints are frequently used in teaching by CU faculty, and the artists are interested in subject matter that will encourage interdisciplinary conversations.

The fundraising effort is being led by Walter Dietrich, a member of the museum's advisory board, and his wife Sheila Kemper Dietrich.

Connect with us
Our mission

The mission of ARCS is to represent and promote registrars and collection specialists, to educate the profession in best practices of registration and collections care, and to facilitate communication and networking.

Learn more about ARCS »