Today the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, home to the LeRoy Neiman Gallery, is known as a place that supports artists. It was founded in 1996 by a $6 million gift from Neiman and his wife, Janet, to Columbia’s School of the Arts.
In an age of digital reproduction, the Center offers a convincing argument for the enduring appeal of printmaking by hand and is notable for its nonprofit status and affiliation with a major university.
“We are able to fulfill LeRoy’s mission here, which was to promote printmaking education and encourage innovation in the field of contemporary prints,” said Tomas Vu-Daniel, artistic director of the Neiman Center and a visual arts professor at the School of the Arts. “The artists who come to the center don’t feel a commercial pressure or a time constraint to produce a product. We give them the freedom to explore and experiment.”