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Description: Drawing: The Invention of a Modern Medium
Foreword and Acknowledgments
Author
PublisherHarvard Art Museums
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00039.002
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Foreword and Acknowledgments
This project inaugurates a new type of collaboration between the Harvard Art Museums and the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. It is the result of an effort we led to engage students in developing and organizing a curricular exhibition based on objects from the museums’ collections. The thinking and planning stages took place in the context of two seminars on the subject of drawing that we taught together during the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 semesters. In the first class, titled Drawing: Object, Medium, Discourse, students developed a conceptual framework for the exhibition based on our initial proposal, helped select objects to study within that framework, and drafted the essays found here. Focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries, we explored how to use objects to tell the story of drawing’s emergence into modernity. To that effect, the seminar combined discussion of selected readings with hands-on engagement with works of art. We examined artistic practices and theories, analyzed historical debates about drawing, and considered recently developed methodologies. At the same time, participants studied and researched the drawings chosen for the exhibition, yielding new information about the works’ creation and even a new attribution — scholarship published for the first time within this catalogue. In the second seminar, Drawing on the Exhibition, a different group of students was tasked with conceptualizing a mode to display the objects as well as developing pedagogical content, including gallery labels and text for the digital component of the project. The exhibition’s final form is a product of these cumulative efforts.
The basic premise driving our project is that the drawing itself can serve as a pedagogical tool. In the course of preparing the exhibition, students gained expertise in the material and technical aspects of the medium, while simultaneously learning about the aesthetic, philosophical, and institutional parameters of drawing practices in the early modern period. Our seminars, which provided direct access to works of art, honed students’ curatorial skills, sharpening their capacity to channel their ideas through objects and to design exhibitions. Working as a group, we encouraged a spirit of collaboration among participants as they shared in the exciting venture of putting together an exhibition. We found this experience to be both instructive and rewarding, and we believe that it has produced an extraordinary and original result. We were impressed and pleased by the students’ excellent work, enthusiasm, and sustained commitment throughout the long process of preparing the show. Our thanks go to Trent Barnes, Samuel Ewing, Ashley Hannebrink, Sarah Grandin, Laura Kenner, Sarah Mirseyedi, Marina Molarsky-Beck, Harmon Siegel, and Sean Wehle, who participated in the first seminar; and to Jaeun Cabelle Ahn, Isabel Elson, Jiye Ha, Diana Ingerman, Adela Kim, Dominique Kim, Michelle Kim, Eloise Lynton, Ellen Poile, and Anes Sung, the members of the second group. We also thank David Pullins and Oliver Wunsch for their contributions to this catalogue.
The project would not have seen the light of the day without the enthusiastic support, encouragement, and advice of our colleagues — past and present — at the Harvard Art Museums. We would like to thank Susan Dackerman and Stephan Wolohojian for shepherding and advocating the project in its earliest stages. Their guidance and support were invaluable. Debi Kao, Miriam Stewart, and Alvin Clark, Jr., also provided indispensable counsel on the exhibition. We are deeply grateful to them and to Edouard Kopp and Ethan Lasser, who offered help and feedback as the project progressed. We were very lucky to have unstinting support from former director Thomas Lentz and from Martha Tedeschi, his successor as the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums, who embraced the project enthusiastically. Many thanks are due to Mary Lister and the team of art handlers who facilitated our weekly classes in the museums’ Art Study Center, and to Tara Cerretani, Heather Linton, and Casey Monahan, who made curatorial files available to our students and provided essential logistical support at various points in the project. We are also very grateful to Eunice Williams and Perrin Stein, each of whom visited our classes and generously shared their curatorial expertise and experience with the students, and to Margaret Morgan Grasselli, who hosted a superb seminar for our group in the study rooms at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Likewise, the exhibition would not have been possible without the support of faculty in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, especially Robin Kelsey, chair of the department at the inception and early stages of our project, and David Roxburgh, its current chair. Their commitment to our collaborative enterprise was of utmost importance. The program administrator, Deanna Dalrymple, also provided crucial help on many occasions.
We are extremely fortunate to have worked with a wonderful team in the making of this catalogue: managing editor Micah Buis and his fellow editors Sarah Kuschner and Cheryl Pappas; design manager Zak Jensen and fellow designers Becky Hunt and Adam Sherkanowski; and Isabella Donadio in the department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources — all helped lead the book through production in a truly exemplary way. We also offer many thanks to the large number of museum colleagues who helped make the exhibition and its associated programming possible, among them Jennifer Allen, Jessica Diedalis, Justin Lee, Karen Gausch, Anne Driesse, Daron Manoogian, Lauren Marshall, Jennifer Aubin, Jessica Levin Martinez, Chris Molinski, Dana Ciccotello, Molly Ryan, Jeff Steward, Stephanie Vecellio, Danny Hoshino, Dana Greenidge, and Jane Braun.
This project has been made possible in part by the Gurel Student Exhibition Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Publication Funds at the Harvard Art Museums. We are grateful for this support.
Finally, we thank our families — Martin Burcharth, Zofia Lajer-Burcharth, and the Acitellis — for their love and patience during our extended period of work on this project.
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth
William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts
Harvard University
Elizabeth M. Rudy
Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Associate Curator of Prints
Harvard Art Museums
Foreword and Acknowledgments
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