The Kennedy Museum has so many prints for its latest exhibit that it doesn’t have room in all the galleries for them, said

Jeff Carr, the museum’s registrar and preparator.

In the exhibit “Portfolios & Suites from the Print Collection,” opening tonight, 14 portfolios of work will be displayed along the museum’s gallery walls, with the remaining 28 to 30 portfolios being featured in two interactive kiosk stations, Carr said.

With the kiosks, which will allow visitors to sit down and browse through the prints, the exhibit is more complete, Carr said.

“(With them) we are able to say, ‘This is all we have,’” he said.

What makes printmaking different from drawing and painting is mainly its technical process, said senior Laura Drapac, a printmaking and graphic design double major. She added that the process of creating the image on a matrix — a grid-like tool — and transferring it to another surface allows artists to create exact replicas of their work.

Almost 400 pieces of work will be displayed, said Beth Tragert, the museum’s administrative assistant.

What makes this exhibit different from previous exhibits is how it is arranged in groupings that usually have a theme, Tragert said, adding that some of the groups feature one artist while others feature many.

This is the museum’s largest show that focuses particularly on portfolios and suites, Carr said.

With this setup, visitors will be able to see the various stages of how some of the prints were made, the way the artists intend their work to be seen, Tragert said.

The exhibit will feature work by Robert Rauschenberg, Jennifer Bartlett, David Hockney and Jim Dine, who received his bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in 1957. Dine’s work is titled Photographs and Etchings.

Tragert said she hopes this exhibit will see the same high turnout at its opening as some of its recent showings have had. Kennedy’s Scale, Art of the Zuni and faculty arts exhibits opened with 400, 300 and 340 visitors respectively.

These three exhibits had close ties to the OU campus and the southeastern Ohio region, she said, adding that returning patrons could be one reason why more people have been attending exhibits.

“If we can keep them coming back that would be great,” Tragert said. “That’s what we’d like to see.”