For Printmaker, Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing

“I’ve looked at this for years and years in books. I can’t believe it’s in front of me,” said New Haven artist and printmaker Allan Greenier, as he stood before an etching by 20th century French painter and printmaker Jacques Villon, brother of the more famous Marcel Duchamp.

Laid out before Greenier was the work of other world-famous printmakers, images he had picked for viewing at the James E. Duffy Study Room of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at Yale Art Gallery. The fourth-floor room, which some refer to as ​“the Duffy,” is a goldmine — a trove of graphic images often accessed by Yale faculty and students, and occasionally by members of the public, who are aware of the gallery’s free service.

Greenier, a contract software developer who lives in Westville, has been a passionate printmaker for decades, amassing a large personal collection of books on the subject. While adding to his breadth of knowledge, however, the books do not provide the aesthetic experience of seeing real prints, face to face.

“Although a print is a reproduction, it is also an original work of art,” said Greenier. ​“When we see them reproduced in a book, no matter how good the quality, it’s just a shadow of the original work.”

Over the last several months, one day per week, Greenier has been curating his own personal exhibits, selecting images, twenty at a time, from the gallery’s 35,000 images of works on paper dating from the 15th century to the present.

The seeming effortlessness of the display belies the extraordinary care department staff must take in bringing the images out of storage. They are sometimes sizable and delicate.

Behind the scenes, the gallery enjoys its own in-house framing and matting department for the works it shows. Preparator Diana Brownell has been framing and matting at the gallery for almost twenty years and is occasionally joined by students, helping out in the busy department.

The stated mission of the Yale University Art Gallery is ​“to encourage appreciation and understanding of art and its role in society through direct engagement with original works of art.” As such, the gallery’s outreach is aimed at ​“Yale students, faculty, artists, scholars, alumni, and the wider public.”

Although Greenier’s status places him in “‘the wider public,” category, his diligent personal research has earned him the moniker ​“Professor Greenier” among some study room staff, who said they appreciate their interactions with him and his analytical observations.

Greenier said that the majority of what he has learned from the gallery visits ​“isn’t easy to verbalize.”

“I get to drink in these things and they become part of my art-making soul,” he said.

In describing his encounters with original prints at the Duffy, Greenier smiled approvingly.

“Ain’t nothing like the real thing,” he said.

In addition to The Duffy Study Room holdings, visitors, by appointment, can access original works for study in The Furniture Study, a library containing 1,000 pieces of American furniture and wood objects, and The Bela Lyon Pratt Study Room for coins, medals, and paper money. For study room hours and additional information, visit the Yale University Art Gallery website.