In its collections, exhibitions, and programs, the Ackland has always paid special attention to works on paper. This exhibition presents around seventy European and American drawings, watercolors, and collages, selected from well over 570 acquired both by gift and by purchase over the past twelve years. Drawing Attention continues a series of exhibitions presenting recent acquisitions of light-sensitive works, following PhotoVision, 2014, which featured photographs, and One of Many, 2017, which featured prints.

With preference given to works not recently displayed or not scheduled for exhibition in the near future, the works in the exhibition showcase a broad chronological span, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and a variety of techniques and functions. The display includes works by a wide range of artists, including Domenichino, Jan van Goyen, Thomas Gainsborough, Edgar Degas, Otto Dix, Robert Motherwell, Thornton Dial, Marcel Dzama, and Lauren Frances Adams. The works are presented in ten thematic sections: Varieties of Portraiture; American Abstraction of the 1960s; Fantasy and Transformation; Image and Text in Contemporary Art; German Modernism; Christian Piety; Landscapes and Architectures; Cartoon and Caricature; Sketches and Studies in Nineteenth-Century France and Britain; and a special wall devoted to Very Recent Arrivals which can accommodate new acquisitions made even during the run of the show.

Drawing Attention, organized by Peter Nisbet, deputy director for curatorial affairs, has been made possible by generous support from the Ackland’s National Advisory Board.