Join curatorial research associate Susan Anderson to look at how artists working at the turn of the 20th century used dry media as a means towards abstraction.

This talk is offered in conjunction with the special exhibition Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black, on view from September 12, 2025 to January 18, 2026.

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.