21.04.2026
Kupferstichkabinett
The Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) ‒ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin was awarded the Richard Hamilton Acquisition Prize at the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Print Fair in New York. The Print Fair held at the Park Avenue Armory is internationally one of the most important platforms for printmaking, editions and drawings. Previous recipients of the prize include the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
At this year’s event, the award went to the Kupferstichkabinett. The prize, awarded by the IFPDA Foundation and supported by ChampionScott Partners, is endowed with $10,000. This prize funding enables a museum to purchase works directly at the print fair.
Nóra Lukács, curator of contemporary art, used the prize money to purchase two works at the fine arts print fair that take up central themes in the museum’s collection: Pregnant Caryatid (2001), a lithograph by Louise Bourgeois, and Europa (2005), a relief-like, spatially arranged photogravure by Kiki Smith. The acquisitions build on the transatlantic history of the Kupferstichkabinett’s collection, which traces its origins, amongst other places, to West Berlin during the Cold War. In the field of contemporary art, in particular, these acquisitions have expanded in recent years and decades to include transcultural perspectives and have been strengthened with works by women artists.
Europa, a large-format work on paper by German-American multimedia artist Kiki Smith, shows the two sides of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, which was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius. The moons, shaped into hemispheres, are printed as photogravures on transparent rice paper; the distance between them corresponds to the artist’s body size. The phrase “I am the flesh of the full moon” is lithographed beneath them.
Louise Bourgeois’ lithograph Pregnant Caryatid (Schwangere Karyatide) depicts a female figure as an architectural column who, in her pregnant condition, is both strong and vulnerable. In the aftermath of events on 11 September 2001, the work links motifs of motherhood and fertility with war and the destruction of architecture, cultural heritage and human life, highlighting universal persisting fragilities.
Individual artworks by Louise Bourgeois and Kiki Smith are already represented in the collection; the current purchases further refine these artistic approaches through their media and thematic diversity.
