NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. - June Wayne, the internationally known California artist who reinvigorated printmaking in the United States in the 1960s at her famed Tamarind Lithography Workshop, has donated artworks valued at $5.47 million to the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, announced university President Francis L. Lawrence.

The gift, the largest ever bestowed on the Mason Gross School, will help insure the vitality of printmaking and fine-art lithography in America by supporting the work of the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper (RCIPP), Lawrence said.

Wayne's gift includes a significant body of her own work along with works by 128 other distinguished artists. She also has accepted an appointment as a research professor at RCIPP that will bring her to the New Brunswick campus each year to lecture, interact with students and create new work in tandem with the center's professional staff of printers, typographers and papermakers.

"The June Wayne collection adds further luster to the print center and visual arts department at Mason Gross," said George B. Stauffer, dean of Mason Gross. "Add to this Ms. Wayne's presence as a research professor, and it is clear that Rutgers will become a mecca for all those interested in modern printmaking and the visual arts."

"Through this gift and with her appointment to the visual arts faculty, Ms. Wayne brings her creative energy, experience and futurist way of thinking to the university. She has bestowed the mantle of creative leadership in the print world on Rutgers," said artist Judith K. Brodsky, Rutgers professor emerita and the founding director of RCIPP. Brodsky has had a long association with Wayne and facilitated her gift to the university.

Also in support of the center, Brodsky herself has donated $500,000 and will help raise another $500,000. Proceeds from the sale of selected works from the Wayne collection along with Brodsky's gift will help create an endowment to support the center's artistic and educational mission "to enable artists who are contributing new narratives to the American cultural mainstream to create original works in print and paper through collaboration with master printers and papermakers."

"June Wayne's magnificent gift to Rutgers enlarges the scope of our renowned art collection and also stimulates new possibilities for all who appreciate or are involved in printmaking," said Lawrence.

"Without Ms. Wayne's vision and efforts, lithography might have died out in the United States," he added. "Now, through the generosity of Ms. Wayne and Professor Brodsky, a legacy has been created that will help guarantee that this art will survive and thrive."

Wayne's gift comprises 3,321 works (2,555 by Wayne herself) plus four of her tapestries, along with works by 128 artists including Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert DeNiro (father of the actor), Francoise Gilot, Elaine de Kooning, Matsumi Kanemitsu, Louise Nevelson, David Hare, Richard Haas, Robert Motherwell, Jose Luis Cuevas and Magda Abakanowicz. They represent painters and sculptors as well as printmakers, who either created works with Wayne or whose works reflect the techniques and qualities she helped preserve and perfect. The donated works will be handled in different ways. A portion of them will constitute a permanent collection of Wayne's work at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers. The museum also will select works by other artists for its collection of American 20th-century prints. Another group will be retained for study by students, faculty and visiting artists and scholars at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper.

Some 200 prints will be offered for sale by Swann Auction Galleries of New York at a special auction Nov. 21 to benefit the center. On Nov. 19, Swann will host a symposium, benefit reception and preview in honor of Wayne. Additional sales of other works will take place in the future, according to Brodsky, who is coordinating the events.

In nearly 70 years as an artist, June Wayne has achieved legendary status for her multiple talents in areas ranging from art to film, and for her visionary leadership and activism on behalf of artists. But her greatest fame stems from her work in and influence on printmaking and fine-art lithography. In a book issued in France upon the 200th anniversary of lithography, "La Memoire Lithographique," the author, art historian and print curator Jorge de Sousa highlighted just two artists representing 20th-century printmaking: Wayne and Picasso. He called Wayne "the incontestable pioneer of contemporary lithography."

Since her first solo exhibition at age 17 in Chicago in 1935, Wayne has boldly explored a variety of media and aesthetic concepts. She was creating "optical art" long before it had a name and adapting Ben Day dots in her work decades ahead of Pop Art. She has bridged art and science with her 1970 series on the genetic code and through her explorations of molecular biology and quantum mechanics. Also a writer and producer, she was nominated for an Oscar in 1974 for "Four Stones for Kanemitsu," regarded as the leading documentary on the art of lithography.

In the 1950s, when she could not find a fine-art lithographer in the United States with whom to collaborate, Wayne began traveling to Paris to have her work printed. Her work attracted the notice of W. McNeil Lowry at the Ford Foundation. The foundation funded Wayne to develop a plan for strengthening lithography in the United States. In 1959, she established the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles and set about refining and improving the way lithographs were made. In the process, she revived an art that was nearly extinct in this country. In its first decade, Tamarind artists working with Tamarind-trained printers created nearly 3,000 lithographs. In 1970, the workshop became the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico, where it still resides.

"In effect," Wayne said, "the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper is doing for all the print media what Tamarind did for lithography; it provides a center where not just lithography is available for the artist, but all the other print media - handmade paper, binding and typography. It really is a spectrum-wide extension of what we tried to do for lithography."

Wayne also has given artists a voice through her activism, which dates to 1939, when she and other artists petitioned the federal government to continue the WPA's (Works Progress Administration) art projects. In the 1950s, she took on McCarthyism, and in the 1970s, she was a leader in the American women's movement in art. In 1990, she was a vocal advocate of government support for the endangered National Endowment for the Arts. Now 84, Wayne continues to live and work on the Los Angeles street that gave her lithography workshop its name. She remains a vital, vibrant force in the art world, and will continue to influence and inspire artists and students while at Rutgers.

"June Wayne has had a tremendous impact on the art world and artists' issues," says Brodsky, who calls Wayne "a heroine of mine."

In her own career, Brodsky has not only been an artist and teacher, but also a Rutgers administrator, political activist and national leader on behalf of women in the arts. She came to Rutgers in 1978 to chair the art department on the Newark campus and later served as an associate dean and associate provost before joining the visual arts faculty in New Brunswick in 1986.

Brodsky was elected the first artist president of the Women's Caucus for Art in 1976. She created the Coalition of Women's Arts Organizations to lobby Congress on behalf of women in the arts. She was also president of the College Art Association and is currently national president of ArtTable Inc., an organization of women leaders in the visual arts.

She founded the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper and became its first director in 1986. More than 200 artists have been in residence, including Leon Golub, Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, Joan Snyder and Pepon Osorio.

Brodsky notes that the fully professional center is unique in having visual arts students work alongside visiting artists and master printers as interns and assistants. The center's facilities comprise five studios located in downtown New Brunswick. The director is Lynne Allen, professor of visual arts and former education director at the Tamarind Institute. Eileen Foti, who holds a Tamarind Master Printer Certificate, is master printer and manager of the print shop. Ann McKeown is the papermaker and manages the papermaking shop.

The center has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, New Jersey State Council on the Arts and such private sources as Johnson & Johnson in support of its fellowship programs and other activities.

Works created by artists in residence at RCIPP have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and museums in Washington and Europe.

The center also has an ongoing relationship with a print shop serving black artists in South Africa and has helped villagers in a remote area of Ecuador establish a cottage industry manufacturing handmade paper from native sisal fiber.

"June Wayne's gift will enable the center to continue as an agent for change by remaining responsive to leading-edge ideas in the art world," said Brodsky.

The donations by Wayne and Brodsky are among the latest gifts to The Rutgers Campaign: Creating the Future Today. The campaign seeks to raise $500 million in private funding by June 30, 2004, for scholarships and financial aid, academic program growth, research support and the recruitment of top faculty to assure Rutgers' place as one of the nation's premier public research universities. As of Aug. 31, the university had secured $438.6 million in campaign donations and pledges.

Contact: Sandra Lanman
732/932-7084, extension 621
E-mail: slanman@ur.rutgers.edu