Join curator of American art Horace Ballard for a gallery rumination around ideas of abstraction, atmosphere, and emotion in Leon Dabo’s Beach Scene, a drawing made exactly 94 years ago today!

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.

Led by:
Horace Ballard, Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Curator of American Art, Division of European and American Art

Please check in with museum staff at the Visitor Services desk in the Calderwood Courtyard to request to join the gallery talk. Space is limited, and talks are available on a first-come, first-served basis; no registration is required.