Claremont, CA—The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College is pleased to announce two dynamic exhibitions of drawings this spring in Claremont. Infinity on Paper: Drawings from the Collections of the Benton Museum of Art and Jack Shear opens on February 14, 2024, and 500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum opens on February 16. Both exhibitions are on view until June 23, 2024. Together these exhibitions—comprising more than 150 drawings by some of the most recognized artists of the past five centuries—present the vast array of possibilities inherent in the medium and revel in this intimate and physical process of creativity. The Benton will mark the opening of both exhibitions with the program “Adventures in Collecting Drawings” on Saturday, February 17 at 4 pm featuring Laura Giles, Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum, and Jack Shear, collector and executive director of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. A reception and exhibition viewing will follow.
“We are delighted to celebrate the power of drawings on this occasion. In a museum context, drawings are at once acknowledged as the basis for all artistic expression—architecture, sculpture, painting, printmaking—yet they rarely get featured as the protagonists of art historical narratives,” said Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the museum. “Even more rewarding is that these two exhibitions are the happy results of collaborations with our valued partners Jack Shear, the Princeton University Art Museum, and our AllPaper Seminar Fellows, the latter supported by the Getty Foundation and the Tavolozza Foundation. We have all worked together to present these exhibitions, which I believe are especially important in a liberal arts context, where the art of drawing may serve as a metaphor for the process of becoming, the potential for scarce or modest materials to transform into compelling, fully realized expressions.”
Infinity on Paper is rooted in the museum’s AllPaper Seminar, a professional development program designed to introduce graduate students and young curators and artists from all backgrounds to the fields of works on paper. The 2023 session of the seminar—the second year of the program—delved into the history, methods, and materials of drawing. As part of the seminar, the AllPaper Fellows were generously allowed access to the exceptional drawing collection of Jack Shear, artist, collector, and executive director of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. This deep engagement with Shear and his collection, as well as with the Benton’s own, led seminar participants to create “conversations” among works that will be installed in Shear’s signature style— closely hung groups without interpretive labels. The result is a playful and provocative series of juxtapositions, exchanges, and elaborations that explore the medium and its wealth of possibilities.
Opening two days later on February 16, 500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum highlights the quality, scope, and scholarly importance of the university’s collection. Featuring 89 works from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth century by artists that include Parmigianino, Guercino, Bernini, Tiepolo, and Modigliani, the exhibition is organized by such topics as technique, artistic education, experimentation, and the pivotal role played by drawing in the creative process. As the backbone of training and imagination since the Renaissance, drawing allowed artists to conceptualize and realize a design on paper, constituting the first mark-making step toward a project’s final realization as a painting, sculpture, or building. As a result, the exhibition comprises a broad range of subject matter while also reflecting the varied nature of the function of drawings—figural studies, compositional studes, caricatures, book illustrations, and even architectural drawings. All of these arresting works, drawn from life and the imagination, convey the universal appeal of drawing as one of the most intimate and revelatory manifestations of artistic practice.
500 Years of Italian Drawings is organized by the Princeton University Art Museum.
The exhibition is curated by Laura M. Giles, Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum. The exhibition was organized at the Benton by Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director, and Li Machado, curatorial assistant. Support for the exhibition has been provided by the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund and The Rembrandt Club of Pomona College and Claremont.
Infinity on Paper is curated by Solomon Salim Moore, assistant curator of collections at the Benton, with curatorial interns Gala Lopez-Grado Salinas (SC ’24) and Kathy Shepherd (PO ’23). The exhibition is supported by the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund at Pomona College and is accompanied by a pocket-sized print-on-demand catalogue including illustrations of more than 15 of the works on view and the interpretive material produced by the AllPaper Seminar Fellows.