What happens when acid meets copper? Etching since 1950 explored the incredible range of the past half-century's intaglio prints. With more than thirty prints from the permanent collection of the Davison Art Center, highlights included works by Jim Dine, Helen Frankenthaler, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, and Louise Nevelson.

In comparison to other print techniques, etching is the easiest for an artist to learn, requiring only that he or she scratch a line through a coating on a copper plate, which is then bathed in a solution of nitric acid, inked, and printed on paper--yet the technical possibilities are endless. In the 1940s, S. W. Hayter founded his legendary Atelier 17 in New York, reinvigorating etching and other intaglio techniques, and attracting such artists as Alexander Calder. In the 1950s, Gabor Peterdi and Mauricio Lasansky set up influential workshops, and subsequent decades saw extensive experimentation by Jim Dine and others.