AUSTIN, TX.- As part of a series of events organized in celebration of its milestone fiftieth anniversary, the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin presents Luminous: 50 Years of Collecting Prints and Drawings at the Blanton. On view June 8 – September 15, 2013, the exhibition highlights the breadth and depth of the museum’s collection of works on paper and provides a rare opportunity to see some of its finest examples displayed together for the first time.

Exhibition highlights include a self-portrait by Diego Rivera and Vik Muniz’s Jorge, a portrait of the celebrated Brazilian musician Seu Jorge, Raphael’s The Holy Family (1508-09), Pablo Picasso’s Minotaure aveugle guide par une fillette dans la nuit (1933-34), Mary Cassatt’s In the Opera Box (circa 1880), and Yayoi Kusama’s Horizontal Love, along with works by Cézanne, Cambiaso, Kentridge, Whistler, Kandinsky, and numerous others.

Over the past five decades, the Blanton has built an encyclopedic collection of prints and drawings concentrating on three major areas: Latin American, European, and American. The museum holds works by masters Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco Goya, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Christo, and many others. Comprised of several major gifts and purchases — including the private collections of Leo Steinberg, John and Barbara Duncan, and James and Mari Michener, as well as nearly four hundred Old Master drawings acquired as part of the Suida-Manning Collection — the Blanton’s collection of works on paper has an international reputation and serves as a resource for art historians and other researchers in the field. Luminous signals the power of prints and drawings in fostering scholarship, igniting the imagination, and instilling wonder.

In Luminous, visitors can examine some of the Blanton’s most iconic works of art in new ways. Salonstyle hanging will allow for a unique viewing experience, while thoughtful curatorial pairings bring to light intriguing visual connections between works that span centuries, continents, and artistic movements. Francesca Consagra, the Blanton’s Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, and European Paintings, describes the exhibition as a lens through which viewers can see how the Blanton built a collection of nearly 16,000 works of art on paper in just fifty years. “The opportunity to systematically review a collection of almost 16,000 works on paper and to select a group of over 150 for presentation is both challenging and highly rewarding. With Luminous, our goal is to present works of great quality and rarity that reflect the collection’s three major areas of concentration as well as works that point to new directions for the collection. We want to celebrate fifty years of thoughtful and inspired stewardship and connoisseurship.”

Representing a wide range of subjects and techniques, Luminous celebrates the Blanton’s impressive legacy and bright future.