This exhibition celebrates the MIA’s superb drawing collection, featuring 100 outstanding drawings, watercolors, and pastels spanning more than 500 years—many of them rarely exhibited, owing to their sensitivity to light. The exhibition highlights the immediacy of drawing and explores its multiple roles as a means of study, observation, problem solving, a record of the artist’s imagination, and a medium for creating finished works of art. Both European and American artists are featured, particularly the foremost figures of German and Austrian Expressionism, including Beckmann, Kirchner, Klimt, Nolde, and Schiele.

An interactive Drawing Studio, adjacent to the show, will also be open during exhibition hours, free with an exhibition ticket purchase. Compose your own still life from a selection of props, drapery, and lighting. Sketch from plaster casts of classical sculptures. Develop fundamental drawing skills through short tutorial videos. Drawing materials are provided, or feel free to bring your own sketchbook and lead or colored pencils. Every Thursday evening, an artist will offer instruction during “The Artist Is In” programs. All ages and levels of experience welcome.

Organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Major Sponsor: 

Generous support provided by the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Exhibitions Endowment Fund, and the Ronald and Eva Kinney Family Foundation.