Conservator Penley Knipe and curator Miriam Stewart will lead an in-depth look at the materials and techniques used to create the varied works in the exhibition American Watercolors, 1880–1990: Into the Light, on view from May 20 to August 13, 2023. Learn about watercolor cakes, papers, and techniques, such as “wet-into-wet,” “resist,” and “scraping.”

American Watercolors, 1880–1990 presents more than a hundred compelling and rarely seen watercolors by both well-known and historically underrepresented American artists selected from the Harvard Art Museums’ deep and diverse holdings. Discover how watercolorists leveraged the imaginative and experimental capacity of the medium to create marvelously diverse works over more than a century.