ArtNight Closeup: A Global Case for Cursive Gets One Last Showing in Pasadena

Lavinia Lascaris, associate director of the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography, said she and her co-curator were deliberate in how they framed “Primarium: A Case for Cursive,” an exhibition on handwriting that received a final showing at ArtNight Pasadena after its March 1 closing.

“We were very careful to not present it as something archaic or outdated or nostalgic even, to present it as something that is very relevant and still has benefits,” Lascaris said.

The exhibition ran at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography, an educational resource and research center at ArtCenter College of Design’s South Campus in Pasadena, and was extended for ArtNight, Lascaris said. ArtCenter’s own ArtNight programming page listed “Primarium” as an active exhibition for the evening. The showing coincided with ArtNight Pasadena Spring 2026, a free, citywide arts event on March 13 produced by the City of Pasadena’s Cultural Affairs Division.

ArtCenter’s published exhibition record lists a March 1, 2026, closing date; Lascaris, the center’s associate director, said the exhibition was kept on for ArtNight specifically. The research behind the show, conducted by José Scaglione and Veronika Burian — co-founders of TypeTogether, a type foundry — covers more than 40 countries and addresses cognitive benefits, motor-skill benefits, and the cultural history carried by cursive forms, Lascaris said.

The exhibition arrived at a moment of renewed attention to cursive instruction in the United States. At least 24 states now require cursive to be taught in public schools, and Pennsylvania became the latest to mandate it when Gov. Josh Shapiro signed Act 2 of 2026 into law in February. Most states had dropped the requirement after adopting Common Core standards in 2010, which omitted cursive.

Lascaris and Ximena Amaya co-curated the exhibition. ArtCenter’s official exhibition credits list both Lascaris and Amaya for exhibition design and curation, supported by intern Averilyn Cummins and student assistants Vini Marques, Hailey Caress, Avi Sahni, and Jay Lopez.

“I don’t want to take ownership of the research,” Lascaris said. “What we did, myself and Ximena Amaya as the co-curators of the exhibition is take this information and try to present it in a way that is approachable, digestible, and educational for the public.”

The exhibition opened July 2, 2025, at the HMCT Gallery, which was founded in 2015 in memory of Professor Leah Hoffmitz Milken, a typographer and longtime ArtCenter faculty member. ArtCenter College of Design, founded in 1930, has been located in Pasadena since 1976. A public talk by Burian and Scaglione and an opening reception were held July 3, according to ArtCenter’s press release. The production was made possible by the Lowell Milken Family Foundation, according to ArtCenter.

Cursive, Lascaris said, is “often perceived as a relic of the past or something that is not relevant anymore.” The exhibition addresses cognitive benefits and benefits to motor skills for young children learning to write, and the culture and history that cursive forms carry, she said.

For a long time, teaching cursive was not mandatory in the United States, Lascaris said. “There are conceptual differences between countries that have considered it unimportant, like the United States. I think now it’s coming back in there,” she said.

Lascaris described three approaches to handwriting education across the countries in the research. “There are some countries that teach print only. Print only means when letters are separated from each other fully. Some start with print only and then gradually progress into teaching them how to write cursive. And then other ones teach cursive directly right away,” she said.

Lascaris said she thinks France considered cursive “really important still.” “I remember that personally, because I was taught French as a kid, and writing in print only was absolutely not an option,” she said.

The exhibition is organized into three sections — history, education, and typography — with each wall in the gallery representing a section and the walls color coordinated, Lascaris said. Because the research is dense and reading-intensive, the curators balanced the information with large-scale visual gestures, including large 3D letters from TypeTogether’s Playwrite super family, developed as a result of the research. Lascaris said the approachable colors and big shapes offset the density of the material, allowing visitors to experience qualities of cursive writing even without absorbing every detail.

The Playwrite typeface engine allows the creation of primary school cursive fonts based on eight variation styles for lowercase letters and three for uppercase, according to TypeTogether’s technical documentation. The fonts are free and available to the public through Google Fonts and Adobe.

“All the artifacts speak to each other, and the exhibition is built as a network of materials that all work together rather than around one object, and every element included in the gallery contributes to that narrative,” Lascaris said. It is a research exhibition, she said, not an art exhibition with different individual pieces.

The exhibition is one part of the Primarium project, which also includes a website at primarium.info and a book that Lascaris said was published, she thought, shortly before the exhibition opened last summer. She described the exhibition as the spatial component of the project. ArtCenter’s press release described the exhibition as “the first physical exhibition of Primarium.”

An official HMCT curatorial statement described the exhibition as presenting cursive as “a living practice where digital tools can serve not as threats but as companions in sustaining its cultural and cognitive significance.” The exhibition uses “infographics, historical references, contemporary textbooks, and cross-cultural comparisons” to demonstrate how cursive styles adapted across geographies and eras, according to ArtCenter’s press release.

ArtNight Pasadena, which the city’s Cultural Affairs Division calls “Pasadena’s signature cultural event,” featured 19 participating venues connected by free shuttle service for its Spring 2026 edition.

Lascaris said “the exhibition does not want to frame handwriting as opposed to technology.” An interview in the exhibition discusses how technology can facilitate motor-skill development using styluses — digital tools that can still operate like a pencil or a pen, she said.

Asked whether cursive teaching reflects the quality of education by country, Lascaris said she could not answer. “There are plenty of countries that invest a lot of money in education that don’t prioritize cursive and others that may … I think there are different examples to support either direction,” she said.

“It’s not so much about choosing one over the other or deciding which is better,” Lascaris said. “It’s how do we use these tools together to shape how people learn, communicate, and preserve culture through written language.”

A Case for Cursive was on view at the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography, ArtCenter College of Design South Campus, 950 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. The Playwrite fonts and research are available at primarium.info. ArtNight Pasadena Spring 2026 was held March 13, 2026, from 6 to 10 p.m. Admission was free.