Demystifying Drawings #17
Saturday, 1 February 2025. Newsletter 17.
The Drawing Foundation
With Allison Wucher, Simon Levenson and Daniella Berman
Founded in 2023 by Allison Wucher and Simon Levenson, The Drawing Foundation is a non-profit that celebrates the art of drawing through in-person events, online initiatives and institutional collaborations. With the dealer Stephen Ongpin of Stephen Ongpin Fine Art as a board member, and the art historian and curator Daniella Berman as Head of Special Projects and Strategic Initiatives, the foundation has quickly established itself as a vital access point to the world of drawings, both in New York and beyond.
For the second year running, The Drawing Foundation has curated a rich programme of talks, workshops and panels for “Drawings Week” in association with Master Drawings New York. Having opened to the public yesterday, the fair and event programme continue in tandem until February 8. Allison, Simon, and Daniella join the editor to discuss The Drawing Foundation’s aims, the schedule of programmes for this week to coincide with Master Drawings New York 2025, and their hopes for the future of the organisation.
Panel Discussion Drawn to Blue Paper at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York, 2024. Organised by The Drawing Foundation in partnership with the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and in association with Master Drawings New York 2024
Could you introduce The Drawing Foundation, and tell us how you are putting its mission into practice?
The Drawing Foundation’s mission emerged from our shared love of drawing and our commitment to fostering exchange around this fundamental form of mark-making. Drawing is so fundamental; from early childhood, there’s an almost innate understanding that if you take a pencil (marker, crayon, etc) to paper (or, in some cases to wall!) it leaves a mark. The potential of drawing is vast, and it is a ubiquitous practice for many artists throughout this history of art. We have such a tendency to want to label someone as a painter, architect, or sculptor, but the truth is that regardless of those labels – with very few exceptions – everybody draws.
Even though the practice of drawing is so foundational, there are few organisations dedicated to exploring the history of drawing alongside contemporary practice. Moreover, the community of curators, scholars, collectors, and artists who are dedicated solely to drawings is relatively small. For many museums in the US, drawings fall into the same curatorial silo/department as prints, and sometimes photography, meaning that some curators may be charged with caring for drawings even though it is not their specific area of scholarship. Our goal is to create a platform that can bring together those who focus exclusively and passionately on drawings and those who are just curious or encounter drawings as a component of their position, collection, or practice. By bringing everyone together we can all benefit from shared knowledge and experience.
We are putting our mission into practice by engaging with a broad array of partner institutions and organisations – from small university galleries to major encyclopedic museums, from commercial galleries that specialise in 18th century drawings to galleries that run the gamut between old and new artforms, from organisations that engage in the commerce of drawings to those that promote drawing scholarship. Through this vast network of partners, we can develop bespoke in-person programs (like the panel discussion we are organising with Trois Crayons tomorrow, February 2!), recording many of them so that they have a longer life-span and can serve as a resource reaching many more individuals. We also promote events and exhibitions hosted by our partners. Everything can be found in one place on our website.
Allison, you have a long-standing relationship with Master Drawings New York, having served as Director between 2016 and 2022. What led you to set up The Drawing Foundation in 2023 and what inspired this redirection towards events and community engagement?
Throughout my time at Master Drawings New York (MDNY) I was engaged in developing partnerships with key institutions in and around New York. Prior to my involvement, there were no events or meaningful interactions between MDNY and institutions like The Met or the journal Master Drawings. I felt it was important to create a more robust week of drawing-related programming to engage our community beyond the gallery exhibitions and auctions. Over the course of 6 years, I had grown the institutional partnerships from 2 events in 2017 to 15 events in 2022. The events became very popular and proved beneficial to our attendees, to our partners, and to MDNY as an organisation. I also personally found the experience to be incredibly rewarding.
In 2022 I approached my friend and colleague, Simon Levenson, to form a nonprofit focused on drawing. Our aim was to create a community-driven platform for creating and listing drawings events that would interest all segments of our constituency - including artists, scholars, curators, collectors, conservators, and enthusiasts. We would build on my existing relationships with museums and other organisations to develop and promote programming year-round and not just in NYC. Simon has a background in teaching drawing and, through his own company - Drawing America, he has the know-how to produce artfully designed event-driven websites. Between the two of us, and with the additional perspectives that Stephen and Daniella offer, we felt we had a shot at building something of great value worthy of the drawings world.
Once MDNY came under new ownership in 2023, we negotiated an arrangement where The Drawing Foundation would be provided with funding to develop, facilitate, and expand the events historically associated with MDNY. This has proven to be a wonderful, mutually beneficial opportunity to further develop meaningful programming during this pivotal week for the drawings community.
Participants from the inaugural Drawing Competition 2024 at The National Arts Club, New York. Organised by The Drawing Foundation and Drawing America
Simon, you are a practicing artist and instructor. Can you tell us about The Drawing Foundation’s engagement with contemporary practice, and how it connects the study and appreciation of historic art to the art of the present?
The majority of the classes I have taught or organised over the past 15 years through my organisations Drawing New York and Drawing America have either been life drawing with a model in a studio or in front of historic art in a museum gallery - both of which are deeply rooted in academic traditions of artistic practice and training. In the classes I teach, every lesson begins with a short discussion of the history of a specific drawing concept and how it is relevant to contemporary artists. This gives students a context for the skills they work with in class and fuels conversations about both new and historic drawing techniques.
The Drawing Foundation engages with contemporary artists by creating art-making events rooted in this same philosophy and academic history. These include both instructed courses and open drawing sessions. We welcome everyone from established practicing artists to adults drawing for the first time in our community.
Last year, in conjunction with Drawing America, The Drawing Foundation hosted our first annual live day-long drawing competition at the National Arts Club. This event allows artists to meet and exchange, spurring each other on to make this a competition in the best sense of the word. Awards were presented in the areas of portraiture and figure drawing. At the end of the day, participants submitted their drawings to be evaluated by three judges - curator Nadine Orenstein (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), artist Hannah Yata, and gallery director LeeAna Wolfman (Templon Gallery, New York). Prizes of cash and supplies were given to the winners in each category. It was a really lovely, convivial event and we look forward to hosting the competition again this Spring at the National Arts Club (stay tuned for information about this!).
This year we will also launch our first New York Plein-Air Festival. We can’t share too much yet, but we are very excited to have this opportunity. Previous iterations of such an event were organised in 2021 and 2022 by Drawing America and held at the famed Olana NY National Historic Site, the picturesque home of the great Hudson River Valley School painter Frederic Edwin Church. By offering an event in a plein-air format in New York City, we enable our community of artists to engage with their location and surroundings in a much more public way. Also, we will be offering a chance to draw and paint some of the most iconic New York cityscapes that have inspired many artists over the past 200 years. You can’t really beat that…
The events programme for Master Drawings New York began yesterday and it highlights the diversity and scope of the drawings field. What events do you have in store for this year’s Master Drawings New York?
This year we are thrilled to have 15 events on our calendar! Every year we have a core group of stellar institutional partners we work with to create the bulk of our programming; these include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Master Drawings journal, the Society for the History of Collecting, Cooper Hewitt, The Winter Show, The Hispanic Society Museum and Library, and the West Harlem Art Fund.
In addition to these core partnership events, each year we try to have a loose theme that guides the programs we craft from scratch. This year, for example, we have a light focus on Italian drawings. This was partially inspired by the numerous blockbuster exhibitions of Italian Renaissance drawings in the UK and European institutions, and by other upcoming drawing exhibitions and projects we wanted to highlight. We have three panel discussions that touch on Italian themes or subjects: Crosscurrents: Cultural Exchange in the 18th Century, on Friday, January 31, New Exhibitions of Old Master Drawings: Conversations with Curators on Sunday, February 2, and Drawings in the Round: Perspectives on Italian Drawings on Monday, February 3. For those who cannot join us in the room for these events, all three will be recorded and available to view on our website later this month.
The Drawing Foundation Team (from left to right): Stephen Ongpin, Daniella Berman, Allison Wucher, and Simon Levenson
You have curated a fascinating programme for this year’s Master Drawings New York. Can you tell us your plans for the future of the collaboration, and for any other forthcoming initiatives?
Beyond the events we organise for Drawings Week, we run a number of other programs and collaborations that expand opportunities for those involved in the dynamic world of drawings. For example, we have offered curator-led tours for our members to exhibitions, including to the pioneering Making Her Mark exhibition with Andaleeb Banta at the Baltimore Museum of Art. We host virtual research colloquiums and lectures with partner institutions such as the Courtauld Research Forum and Association of Print Scholars. As mentioned earlier, for the contemporary artists and makers in our community, we mount an annual drawing competition, and are excited to be in the planning stages for a New York plein-air festival – stay tuned!
In October 2024, we held our first edition of On Drawings, a two-day program of exhibition tours, study sessions, and lectures with partner institutions and sponsored by the Salon du Dessin and Master Drawings New York. The series considered both modern and old master drawings and the events ranged from conversations with living artists, discussions on the boundaries of the category “drawing”, lectures on the history of drawing collecting in France, and talks on a broad array of drawing practices including contemporary and historic Indigenous American drawings. Many of the events from On Drawings 2024 were recorded and can be found on our website. We look forward to organising the next edition of On Drawings for Fall 2025.
How can people get involved with The Drawing Foundation, and participate in future events?
Individuals can become members of The Drawing Foundation. We offer an accessible membership rate, as well as discounted and free memberships for students. We have regular events for our members, in addition to our expansive roster of free programming that is open to a broader public. Members have access to a member platform on our website where they can interact with other members, bookmark events and exhibitions, and register for exclusive events. We also are always happy to work with museums, galleries and other organisations who may be interested in collaborating or promoting their events/exhibitions on our website.
While we are based in New York City, we plan to expand our network and promote events that allow our community to come together around the world. To learn about future initiatives, please sign up for our free mailing list on our website and follow us on Instagram (@thedrawingfoundation). For greater access, we invite your readers to become members of The Drawing Foundation and join us in championing the fundamental form of mark-making that is drawing!
MDNY 2025 Events Calendar. Events are organised by The Drawing Foundation.
