Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black
Georges Seurat, “Woman Seated by an Easel,” c. 1884–88. Conte crayon on beige wove paper. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest from the Collection of Maurice Wertheim, Class of 1906, 1951.70.
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Discover how simple tools can be powerful vehicles for artistic expression.
This exhibition celebrates the act of drawing using familiar tools—charcoal, chalk, crayon, and graphite. Each material exhibits distinctive properties: charcoal can be intensely rich and velvety, or delicately gray and suggestive, while graphite is slippery, shiny, and easy to erase. Crayon is deeply black and waxy, whereas chalk can be crumbly and diffuse. The creative manipulations of these media—smudging, scraping, and erasing—make them versatile tools for adding intensity, depth, precision, and expression to an artist’s vision.
Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black showcases around 120 captivating works, spanning from the 19th to 21st centuries, alongside artists’ materials from the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. Visitors will enjoy drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, John Singer Sargent, and Odilon Redon, alongside 20th- and 21st-century artists such as Piet Mondrian, Lyonel Feininger, Diego Rivera, Richard Serra, John Wilson, Isabella Quintanilla, and Toyin Ojih Odutola, all of whom push their use of drawing media in new directions.
Sketch, Shade, Smudge is curated by Penley Knipe, Philip and Lynn Straus Senior Conservator of Works of Art on Paper and Head of the Paper Lab, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies; and Miriam Stewart, Curator of the Collection, Division of European and American Art. Visitors are invited to sketch in the galleries, experiment with media in the Materials Lab and continue drawing through a series of Instagram tutorials.
Support for this exhibition is provided by the Martha Tedeschi Exhibition Fund, made possible by the Lunder Foundation—Peter and Paula Lunder Family; the Alexander S., Robert L., and Bruce A. Beal Exhibition Fund; the Anthony and Celeste Meier Exhibitions Fund; the Rabb Family Exhibitions Fund; and the Annemarie Henle Pope Special Exhibitions Fund. Related programming is supported by the M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Series Endowment Fund.
Online Resources
Watch a short introductory video with the curators as well as a recording of the opening lecture featuring paper conservator Kimberly Schenck on YouTube.
Supplementary exhibition-related content on Bloomberg Connects features audio clips of curatorial staff from across the museums discussing various drawings on display, as well as short video demonstrations of drawing techniques. Download the Bloomberg Connects app on a mobile device and search for the Harvard Art Museums for the best user experience (it’s free!).