The Chazen's 20th-century prints document the impact of such important movements as Japonism, Cubism, and Expressionism in Europe and America in the first decades of the century. It embraces examples by Arthur Wesley Dow, Pablo Picasso, and Emil Nolde, among many others. The collection includes prints produced during the WPA projects of the 1930s and early 1940s and a range of prints by John Steuart Curry, Thomas Hart Benton, and Grant Wood. With particularly strong holdings in the works of Stanley William Hayter, it also follows the flowering of printmaking studios since 1950 and the steadily growing number of workshops in America and abroad producing prints in collaboration with the best-known artists of the day. However, the collection also reflects the work produced by printmakers who devoted their career to perfecting their craft. The printmaking program that developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since WWII is also well represented in the collection. The works of Rauschenberg, Close, and Kara Walker represent large-scale contemporary printmaking. More traditionally proportioned prints are exemplified by the work of Kiki Smith and Jasper Johns.

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