Exhibition Tour: Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black

This event does not require registration; see further details below.

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.

The Harvard Art Museums offer free admission every day, Tuesday through Sunday. Please see the museum visit page to learn about our general policies for visiting the museums.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Martha Tedeschi Exhibition Fund, made possible by the Lunder Foundation–Peter and Paula Lunder Family; the Alexander S., Robert L., and Bruce A. Beal Exhibition Fund; the Anthony and Celeste Meier Exhibitions Fund; the Rabb Family Exhibitions Fund; and the Annemarie Henle Pope Special Exhibitions Fund. Related programming is supported by the M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Series Endowment Fund.

The Harvard Art Museums are committed to accessibility for all visitors. For anyone requiring accessibility accommodations for our programs, please contact us at am_register@harvard.edu at least 48 hours in advance. Please include the name and date of the program in the subject line of your email.