PORTLAND, Maine -- Prints have in ...

PORTLAND, Maine -- Prints have in extent been the neglected stepchild of art museums, taking a back seat to paintings and statuary even photography and crafts.

further in a dramatic role reversal, pair centuries of prints are ready to take center stage in Maine as part of an ambitious frame that organizers are trumpeting as the biggest fine arts collaboration in the state's history.

Participants in "The Maine Print Project: Celebrating 200 Years of Printmaking in Maine" include 25 museums, galleries and communitys that will offer exhibitions at various times beginning this month and continuing end March.

The throw was the brainchild of Bruce Brown veteran curator of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport and longtime print collector. He conven a meeting of museum curators in September 2003 to view if other institutions might be interested in joining him in organizing print-related exhibitions.

"It just took distant from like a rocket. Everybody is interested in it," said Brown who retires this year. "There's a tremendous amount of excitement."

AN EVERYMAN MEDIUM

Prints can be made in various ways: carvings forward woodblocks, engravings on metal plates, lithography forward stone, silkscreens on plastic. The images are then printed onto paper, in one cases with the prints numbered as part of a limited edition before the block up or plate is destroyed.

"It's kind of the medium of Everyman," Brown said. "Prints generally are more affordable, and the enslaves are often those of everyday life."

Maine's printmaking history spans sum of two units centuries, going back even before statehood in 1820 The Maine Print Project's earliest work is a warship at anchor that was published in Portland according to Daniel Johnson in 1807 as the frontispiece of a part about rules governing marine shipping; among the greatest in quantity recent prints are those of digital artists who bear their cutting-edge images at a computer

A RICH TRADITION

Maine's rich printmaking tradition bring reproachs the many noted artists who have worked in that medium and have ties to the state, either as native son and daughters, summer residents or the community who moved to Maine to live there year-round.

Among the best known whose prints are included in the exhibitions: Winslow Homer Marsden Hartley, Louise Nevelson Robert Indiana, Edward Hopper Rockwell Kent William and Marguerite Zorach, Neil Welliver and Alex Katz.

Landscapes are well showed as befits a state whose natural beauty is undivided of its principal attractions. on the other hand the exhibitions go beyond seascapes and lighthouses to encompass a wide range of make submissives and styles from Depression-era realism to abstract expressionism.

As organizers of the delineate began their planning, they quickly recognized the ne for a work that would enhance the museum displays from providing context for the entire period and tying the many uncompounded bodys together.

"So little has been written about the history of printmaking in Maine that we necessityed something that would act as a cohesive force for all of this," Brown said.

After being approached from Brown, David P. Becker, who has serv as a curator at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, took forward the job with gusto, turning revealed in nine months the groundbreaking convolution The Imprint of Place: Maine Printmaking 1800- 2005 (The Center for Maine Contemporary Art and Down East parts $35).

An unabashed print lover Becker said museums have given short shrift to prints for various reasons, including their small format that fails to dominate a gallery and relate tos that works of art forward paper are susceptible to damage from front to light.

"Also, they aren't as expensive, thus people don't give them as frequently regard," he said, echoing Brown "I regard with affection prints, I've chosen prints as my field of meditation because they are considered, rightfully, the greatest in quantity democratic medium."

The Maine Print Project's 25 display venue include the works of any 350 printmakers and cover the extent and breadth of the state, from the Ogunquit Museum of American Art near the state's southern tip to the University of Maine at Presque Isle's Re Art Gallery, more than 300 miles to the north.

A handful of the larger institutions, including the Portland Museum of Art, Maine Historical Society and Center for Maine Contemporary Art, move overviews of Maine printmaking. Other museums and galleries have chosen to focus onward individual artists, specific techniques or assign places tos

Supplementing the exhibits will be a series of educational programs, including studio demonstrations through artists and discussions by printmakers, curators and historians.

Perhaps as interesting as the exhibitions themselves is the breadth of the collaboration, a rarity in the art world where many institutions serve to go their own way.

in the same state [i]or[/i] condition efforts are not without authority in past practice In 2003, the Portland Museum of Art l five other institutions in putting forward exhibitions of the work of Brazilian-born photographer Sebastiao Salgado. moreover the print exhibitions, if solely in the number of participating museums and galleries, places a new collaborative standard.