Seton Smith, the sister of artist Kiki Smith, has given more than 250 prints made by Kiki to the New York Public Library (NYPL) and has pledged to make a gift of any future prints from her sister to the library. The collection is the most comprehensive collection of Kiki Smith’s prints in the U.S. and includes multi-print sets, portfolios, and artist books.
“I am very thrilled by my sister Seton Smith’s gift to the New York Public Library because I could think of no more wonderful place for my prints to be,” Kiki Smith said in a press release. “Public libraries are to be cherished.”
Spanning four decades, from the 1990s to the present, the collection includes My Blue Lake (1994), a photogravure lithograph; the etching Trinity, Heaven and Earth (2000); the hand-colored intaglio Pool of Tears II (2000); and Remember (2014), a woodcut with metal leaf. The new acquisitions join thirty other Kiki Smith prints and twelve artist books already in the Library’s Prints and Spencer Collections, part of the Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs. Smith’s prints will be available to the public.
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“This gift transforms our holdings of one of the most significant living artists of our day and signals the library’s commitment to preserving the legacy of singular women printmakers,” said Madeleine Viljoen, the NYPL’s Curator of Prints and the Spencer Collection. “Kiki’s treatment of themes related to nature, myth, and storytelling resonates particularly well with the library’s manifold historical collections.”
Kiki Smith, who is represented by Pace Gallery, works in sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing, and textiles. She was recognized in 2006 by Time as one of the “TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World,” and her work has been featured at five Venice Biennales.
Seton Smith works primarily in photography, with a focus on vernacular American architecture and landscape. Her art is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the International Center of Photography, New York; and elsewhere.