LECTURE—Drawings Revealed: Sketch, Shade, Smudge-Drawing from Gray to Black

Join us opening lecture for the special exhibition "Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black," on view from September 12, 2025 through January 18, 2026. In this lecture titled "Sticks, Stumps, and Fingers—Drawings Revealed," Kimberly Schenck, former head of paper conservation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., will discuss the diversity of black drawing media and how it affords artists different mark-making possibilities. Textures can range from crumbly to waxy, and marks made from pencils and sticks can be manipulated with tools such as fingertips, rolled paper stumps, and chamois cloths to create a range of tones. Artists also choose the paper for their media carefully—for its surface texture, resiliency, and color. "Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black" celebrates the act of drawing using familiar tools—charcoal, chalk, crayon, and graphite. Each type of material has 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. The exhibition 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. #exhibition #drawingsketch #harvardartmuseums --- Speakers: Kimberly Schenck, former Head of Paper Conservation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Miriam Stewart, Exhibition Co-Curator and Curator of the Collection, Division of European and American Art at the Harvard Art Museums; Penley Knipe, Exhibition Co-Curator and Philip and Lynn Straus Senior Conservator of Works of Art on Paper and Head of Paper Lab of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums; Opening Remarks by Sarah Ganz Blythe, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums --- 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. All images and graphics used in the video belong to their respective owners and this channel does not claim any right over them. Copyright Disclaimer: Any use of copyrighted content on this channel constitutes “fair use” pursuant to 17 U.S. Code § 107 as it is utilized for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Video: September 11, 2025 © President and Fellows of Harvard College. For questions related to permission for commercial use of this video, please contact the Department of Digital Imaging and Visual Resources at [email protected].