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Artist, Scholar and Print Expert Thomas W. Lollar to Lead Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers

Tuesday 07. December 2010 - Thomas W. Lollar, a scholar of fine art prints, arts administrator and internationally recognized ceramist, has been named director of the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions, assuming the reins of Rutgers' noted print center from its namesake and founding director, Judith K. Brodsky, who is retiring.

For 22 years, Lollar was director of visual arts and the List Print Program at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. He is also an instructor in the Arts and Humanities Department at Teachers College of Columbia University, and has taught at the Parsons School of Design.
As an artist, Lollar is a renowned ceramist whose unique, hand-built clay murals are represented around the world in public, corporate and private collections. A graduate of Western Michigan University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and ceramics and a master’s in ceramics and art history, Lollar has been a visiting artist and scholar at the American Academy in Rome, a Fellow at the Salzburg Seminar and winner of several artistic awards.
In the print world, Lollar has extended his reputation as a valued resource to artists and nonprofit organizations through the Benefit Print Project, which he co-founded earlier this year with Paul Limperopulos, his former assistant and curator at the List Print Program at Lincoln Center. The project coordinates the creation of limited-edition prints to raise money for nonprofit arts organizations.
“I am so pleased that Tom Lollar will be the director of the Brodsky Center. The center’s leader must have a wide variety of attributes, including curatorial expertise in fine art prints, managerial experience in a complex arts organization, widespread relationships in the contemporary art world and an understanding of the university setting,” said Brodsky. “Tom has these qualities and more. I am confident he will take the Brodsky Center to new heights.”
“We are delighted and honored that Thomas Lollar is coming to Rutgers to head the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions,” said George Stauffer, dean of the Mason Gross School. “His work at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Columbia University is marked by distinction, and I am confident that he will lead our nationally ranked print center to even greater success. I look forward to working with him at the Mason Gross School.”
At the Brodsky Center, Lollar takes the helm of an internationally renowned magnet for distinguished artists who are invited to create new works in print and handmade paper in collaboration with master printers and papermakers. The center was founded in 1986 by Brodsky, an artist, printmaker, arts advocate and then-professor of art, as the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts. It was renamed in 2006 in recognition of Brodsky’s contributions to Rutgers and the printmaking world.
Since its founding, the Brodsky Center has worked with a culturally and stylistically diverse array of artists, including Kiki Smith, Fred Wilson, the late Leon Golub, Faith Ringgold, Joan Snyder, Juan Sanchez, William Kentridge, Chitra Ganesh and Pat Steir. They have used the opportunity to reach beyond their own traditional media to create original works in print and paper.
Editions produced by the Brodsky Center are found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and Smithsonian, The Newark Museum, Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The Brodsky Center also is a learning center housed at the Mason Gross School. Graduate and undergraduate visual arts students are welcomed as interns and exposed to the collaborative processes among artists, printmakers and papermakers involved in the creation of new work. It comprises five studios that enable work in all print media, including intaglio, lithography, silk screen, relief papermaking, photo process and books.
Working artists are invited to be in residence at the center through three state, national and international fellowship programs. The center receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, among others.
“It is a sincere honor to join the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers,” Lollar said. “I have been an admirer of Judy Brodsky and the august print program she created for many years. ‘Innovative’ is the key word, as this studio is the center for outstanding new ideas in contemporary prints under the accomplished supervision of Master Printer Randy Hemminghaus and Master Papermaker Anne McKeown, along with its dedicated staff. I look forward to being affiliated with the highly regarded Mason Gross School of the Arts under the creative leadership of Dean Stauffer.”
Brodsky, who lives in Princeton, will be stepping down after a distinguished career at Rutgers in which she was not only a professor of visual art, but also held positions as an associate dean and associate provost. Besides founding the Brodsky Center, she was instrumental in establishing the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers, a consortium member of the Institute for Women’s Leadership and a center of the Office of the Associate Vice President for Academic and Public Partnerships in the