The Only Way To Hold A Weight: Richard Serra Prints

From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation

October 26, 2024 – January 12, 2025

Richard Serra (1938-2024) is best known for his monumental, rolled steel sculptures and architectural interventions. However, he maintained a vigorous drawing practice alongside the sculptural. Serra considered the drawings their own entities and not lesser companions to the sculptures. Serra’s prints similarly push the boundaries between two and three dimensions, creating a powerful interplay of form and space. This exhibition features 18 prints spanning his extensive career, showcasing his innovative use of black as a medium and a material that evokes a physical presence.

Serra’s prints, much like his sculptures, challenge and engage viewers, inviting them to experience the tension, weight, and mass that define his work. Through this compelling collection, viewers witness the profound impact of Serra’s artistic vision and delve into the creative process of one of contemporary art’s most influential figures.

About Guest Curator Daniel Duford
Daniel Duford is Visiting Professor of Art at Reed College and is Creative Director of Building Five in Portland, Oregon. His curatorial projects include the 2012 exhibition Fighting Men: Leon Golub, Jack Kirby, Peter Voulkos at the Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College, Co-Curator with Linda Tesner of Intersecciones: Havana to Portland (2016) and An Earth Song, A Body Song: Figures with Landscapes. Works from the Permanent Collection (2020) at Orange County Museum of Art. His work has been exhibited nationally including MASS MOCA, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, Orange County Museum of Art, Queer NY Arts Festival and the Boise Art Museum. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2010 Hallie Ford Fellow and a 2012 Art Matters Grant recipient. His current writing can be found on The Whole Live Animal at danielduford.substack.com.

About the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation
The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation’s contemporary art collection is one of the most notable in North America. The Foundation has shared its art with millions across the U.S. and internationally through groundbreaking exhibitions, publications, and programs. Founded by ARTnews Top 200 Collector Jordan D. Schnitzer—whose passion for art began in his mother’s contemporary art gallery in Portland, Oregon—the Foundation has organized over 180 exhibitions from its collection and additionally loaned thousands of artworks to over 120 museums at no cost to the institutions. Schnitzer began collecting contemporary prints and multiples in 1988 and today is North America’s largest print collector. His Foundation’s collection consists of more than 22,000 works of art, including a wide variety of prints, sculptures, paintings, glass, and mixed media works. To learn more, visit JordanSchnitzer.org.

Image Above: Serra, Richard, American, (1938 – 2024)
T.E. Which Way Which Way?, edition 26/45
2001
lithograph and etching
Credit line: Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer
Photography Credit: Strode Photographic, Courtesy of Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation

The Only Way To Hold A Weight: Richard Serra Prints, From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation is curated by Guest Curator Daniel Duford. Funding has been generously provided by the Craig E. Wollner Exhibition Fund of OJMCHE.

Exhibition Related Events

• Holding Weight: Drawing Like A Sculptor with Daniel Duford

  In tandem with The Only Way to Hold a Weight From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, this workshop will mimic Richard Serra’s drawing approach. Curator and artist Daniel Duford will run through exercises that use Serra’s favorite tool: the black paint stick. The workshop will explore how the density of the shape and the effort made to make it bring meaning to the work. Through hands-on exercises and experimentation, participants will make their own works that create the idea of weight and lightness with simple means. The workshop asks the question, how can a drawing be sculptural?

  November 16 | 2:30pm | Location: OJMCHE | $10 for general, $5 for members with code on back of membership card. Purchase Ticket

• The Only Way To Hold A Weight: Curator Talk with Daniel Duford

  Richard Serra may be best known for his steel sculptures, but he was also a prolific printmaker and drawer. Join Daniel Duford, curator of The Only Way to Hold a Weight: Richard Serra Prints from the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, to learn more about the artist’s life and his lesser known–but equally impressive–2D works. Duford will also demonstrate the printmaking techniques Serra utilized that are on display in the exhibition.

  November 21 | Event starts at 6 – 7:30pm, Doors open at 5:30pm | Location: OJMCHE | $5 for general, free for members with code on back of membership card. Purchase Ticket

• The Only Way To Hold A Weight: Curator Walkthrough with Daniel Duford

  Join Curator and artist Daniel Duford as he leads a walkthrough The Only Way to Hold a Weight From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation.

  December 6 | 2 – 3pm | Location: OJMCHE | Included with admission, free for members. RSVP Here.