MoMA acquires prints made at Island Press

New York’s Museum of Modern Art has acquired “Printing Black America: Du Bois’s Data Portraits in the 21st Century,” a collection of 30 prints created by artist William Villalongo and data scientist Shraddha Ramani in collaboration with six printmaking studios across the country, including Island Press. A selection of the prints is on view now through June 2027 in MoMa’s exhibition, “Full Disclosure: The Edge of Information Design.” The museum shared that the “project treats Du Bois’s data portraits not as historical relics but as living instruments, primed for reactivation in the present day.”

The collection, previously presented at Print Center New York and the Brooklyn Public Library, comprises six thematic portfolios. The portfolio published by Island Press, “Employment,” includes five prints focusing on the Black workforce, providing insight into the dynamics that show how, when, and where Black people participated in the economy and offering an opportunity to reflect on the legacies of slavery.

Villalongo and Ramani created the work while in residence as the 2023-24 Prensky Visiting Artists, during which time they conducted research in St. Louis and collaborated with Sam Fox School students.

Island Press, which became a member of the International Fine Prints & Drawing Association earlier this month, also recently released works by Prensky Visiting Artists Stacy Lynn Waddell (2024) and EJ Hauser (2025). Waddell’s “Standing Back View Nude Self with Open Hands on Buttocks,” involves figurative images produced at human scale, using the texturally rich process of collagraph. Hauser’s “Proof,” a set of four prints, brings together drawing, laser engraving, and collagraph, toggling between representation and abstraction. Both artists invited students into their creative process while in residence at the Sam Fox School’s research-based printmaking workshop.