American Artists Group Collection

In 1997, the Carter bought a group of 116 prints from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), which had deaccessioned these duplicates from its collection. Nearly all of them were published by the American Artists Group (AAG), an organization that sold unsigned, unlimited edition prints at affordable prices during the early 20th century. Founded in 1934 by businessman Samuel Golden and championed by the prominent art dealer Carl Zigrosser, who curated the PMA’s print collection from 1941 to 1963, the organization helped sustain a market for American printmaking during the Great Depression. Some of the best-known printmakers of the era sold prints through the group, including Howard Norton Cook, Wanda Gág, Louis Lozowick, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Prints in the collection not published through AAG include some lithographs by Adolf Dehn and Federico Castellón.