Tamarind Institute

Tamarind Institute is a lithography workshop created in 1960[1] as a division of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, United States.

Tamarind was founded in the absence of an American print shop dedicated to serving artists, and during a period when American artists tended to reject lithography and collaborative printing in favor of the more "direct...immediate" possibilities of abstract expressionist painting.

[2]Tamarind Institute's website lists the following goals, developed by founding director June Wayne with associate director Clinton Adams and technical director Garo Antreasian in 1960:[1]" Tamarind can be credited with single-handedly reviving the medium of lithography in the US, both insofar as they made the medium "respectable" and viable and also in that their dedicated research led to technical and economic breakthroughs with a visible impact on lithography in particular and printmaking in general; e.g., lightfast inks, durable and consistent printmaking paper, precise registration systems, aluminum plate printing, and lightweight, large diameter rollers are but a few important aspects of printmaking which either originated at or were refined by Tamarind.

The workshop also established several now-customary procedures for editioned prints, such as precisely recording and documenting every edition, and affixing both a workshop chop and a printer's chop to each proof or impression in recognition of the printer's important role.

[15][16] From 1972 to 1973, Chen Lok Lee received a fellowship from the Ford Foundation, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, to study at Tamarind.