Corporate Lease Program

The Orlando Museum of Art’s Contemporary American Graphics Collection was begun in 1974 by the Council of 101 and was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Corporate Lease Program, administered by Council of 101 volunteers, leases a limited number of prints from this collection to businesses and organizations in Central Florida.

By placing leased prints in publicly accessible spaces, they provide the community an opportunity to experience original, museum quality art and learn about the art and artists of our time. The lease fees are used to purchase new prints each year, reflecting the Museum’s long-standing commitment to collecting, interpreting and exhibiting the art of our time. After prints have been leased for a limited number of years they are retired and exhibited only in the Museum’s galleries.

The Contemporary American Graphics Collection is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in Florida. The collections of over 275 prints includes works by major artists of the past 50 years, including early works by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenburg, Andy Warhol, and others who helped establish the primacy of America art in the mid-20^th century.

Artists have provided prints for centuries, but the works in this collection reflect extraordinary developments in fine art printmaking since the 1960s. During this period, a number of adventurous young master printers established workshops that included new models for working collaboratively with artists. Shops such as Universal Limited Art Editions, Tamarind Lithography Workshop and Gemini G.E.L. sought out leading artists of the day and challenged them to be experimental and innovative with print media.

Artists were given the opportunity to work with teams of skilled master printers in a studio environment where ideas were freely exchanged in an effort to produce ground-breaking work.The results achieved from that time to the present established fine art printmaking as a major genre within contemporary art.