The exhibition Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black highlights the myriad ways artists experiment with drawing techniques to address social issues of their time. Join curatorial fellow Peter Murphy to learn about Marc Brandenburg’s multimedia approach to his drawings of unhoused people in Berlin.

Sketch, Shade, Smudge: Drawing from Gray to Black celebrates the act of drawing using familiar tools—charcoal, chalk, crayon, and graphite. Each type of 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.

Led by:
Peter Murphy, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Division of Modern and Contemporary Art