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Join us for an in-depth, hour-long tour of our special exhibition Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black, led by an exhibition curator. The exhibition will be on view from September 12, 2025 through 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 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 includes drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, John Singer Sargent, and Odilon Redon, alongside works by 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.
Please check in with museum staff at the Visitor Services desk in the Calderwood Courtyard to request to join the tour. Space is limited, and talks are available on a first-come, first-served basis; no registration is required.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
