CHAPEL HILL, NC.-The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill presents Three Sides to a Sheet of Paper - How Prints Communicate, Represent, and Transform (1482-2002), on view through November 13, 2005. What is a print? What is the difference between an original print and a reproduction? Why are some prints considered works of art and others not?

In Three Sides to a Sheet of Paper: How Prints Communicate, Represent, and Transform (1482 – 2002) curator Timothy Riggs offers an engaging new approach to understanding the print. With eighty prints, ranging from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century, this exhibition and catalogue explore how prints communicate, represent, and transform their content in techniques ranging from woodcuts to photomechanical processing.

As multiple images, prints were the first medium of mass communication, diffusing everything from religious instruction and political propaganda to art and fashion. To do this, they had to represent forms, ideas, and often other works of art. But the artists’ mastery of the technical requirements of the various print techniques inevitably transformed what they represented, translating images into new languages of line, color, and texture.

Some of the works in this exhibition are easily recognizable as art like Picasso's The Artist and the Child which shows a woman painting what seems to be a self-portrait while a child plays on the floor. Others are less obvious examples of the fine art print like magazine covers or a photomechanical poster, The Sopranos, Fourth Season by Annie Leibovitz.

Three Sides to a Sheet of Paper: How Prints Communicate, Represent and Transform includes master works by Albrecht Durer, Picasso, and Lichtenstein, alongside rare works by less familiar artists including Lucas van Leyden, Hendrick Goltzius, Jacques Callot, and Rodolphe Bresdin. The exhibition will also feature works by artists not typically known for their prints, including Pieter Bruegel, Raphael, and Peter Paul Rubens.