For many artists, drawings reflect private moments of invention and are not necessarily intended for exhibition. Only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did collectors begin to recognize drawings as worthy of study and preservation. Presented in conjunction with The Enduring Mark: Six Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection, this lecture by Victoria Sancho Lobis traces the lives and afterlives of drawings, charting their journeys from artists’ studios to collectors’ cabinets, auction houses to gallery walls. Lobis highlights a number of drawings gifted to the museum from the Gray Collection, bringing a depth of familiarity with them from her many years as a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Lobis is the Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. Previously, she worked at the Art Institute of Chicago in a variety of curatorial and administrative roles, including interim chair of the Department of Prints and Drawings. She has curated exhibitions and published extensively in the fields of early modern European prints and drawings, modern and contemporary Latin American works on paper, and contemporary American drawings.