Greetings from Delaware.(Current and coming)('Greetings from Delaware and Other Artist Communities' and 'Seeing the City: Sloan's New York')

The Boston-based lithographer Louis Prang introduced printed Christmas cards, an English innovation of 1843, in the United States in 1875, holding competitions among artists for cash prizes to come up with the best designs. During the early twentieth century, the popularity of the arts and crafts movement in this country inspired many artists and printmakers to begin producing personal cards to share with friends and family, the best examples of which display timeless visual messages through expert craftsmanship.

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More than 250 handmade and commercially printed greeting cards designed by artists are on view at the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware, in an exhibition entitled Greetings from Delaware and Other Artist Communities. The cards are from the collection of Jann Haynes Gilmore and B. Joyce Puckett, and they come mostly from Delaware, but there are also numerous examples from Maine and New Mexico, states where the collectors have traveled and lived while researching art colonies and the artists who frequented them. Among the dozens of artists represented in the collection are John Sloan, Paul Manship, Gustave Baumann, and Rockwell Kent, as well as lesser-known figures. The exhibition, which also includes paintings, watercolors, and prints by many of the artists, is on view until February 25, 2008. There is a catalogue by Gilmore with contributions by Ryan ...