Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 12, 2017 (Santa Fe, NM)—Four Santa Fe cultural institutions will celebrate the Art of the Draw during the summer of 2017. The multi-venue, multi-event, world-class collaboration celebrates drawing as the fundamental starting point for creation in both the arts and sciences for representational painting, sculpting, engineering, design and architecture. The featured exhibitions collectively explore drawing as the root of art, the first form of written expression that informs the creative process.

The Art of the Draw collaboration includes the New Mexico Museum of Art’s exhibitionLines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now; the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s presentation of its namesake’s drawings in conjunction with her paintings; the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts’ exhibition Action Abstraction Redefined; and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale’s 2017 Summer Festival Season, which will feature a score dedicated to Pablo Picasso. The Art of the Draw collaboration received a generous grant from the City of Santa Fe’s Art Commission.

“Explored individually, the experience of any of these exhibitions will be rewarding,” said Mary Kershaw, Director of the New Mexico Museum of Art. “Explored together, this exciting collaboration offers a great experience of the power of drawing, with exhibits from the great masters of the Renaissance to New Mexico’s American artists, and great American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, complemented by live concerts by Santa Fe Desert Chorale.”

The New Mexico Museum of Art will serve as the first international, and one of two U.S. venues for the exhibition Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now: from the British Museum, from May 27, 2017 - September 17, 2017. The line-up of artists represented in the show spans over six centuries and reads like a ’who’s who’ of international artists through the ages.

With a collection of more than 700 drawings and sketchbooks the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum tells the story of the artist’s life and art with great depth and nuance. The current installation, A Great American Artist, A Great American Story, runs through October. The galleries showcase several drawings in conjunction with finished paintings. These pairings demonstrate how O’Keeffe worked out her ideas of abstraction and composition before picking up her paintbrush. Throughout the summer the Museum will explore this theme, featuring presentations and drawing workshops for artists of all skills and ages. 

The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts exhibition Action Abstraction Redefined, runs from July 7, 2017 through December 31, 2018. Pieces and drawings featured in the exhibition are from MoCNA’s permanent collection and were created in the 1960s and 70s at IAIA.

The eighth movement of Francis Poulenc’s Figure Humaine, dedicated to Pablo Picasso, gives name to the Santa Fe Desert Chorale’s program Liberté: Music of Resistance and Revolution.

About Art of the Draw: Art of the Draw is a community collaboration forged between the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale. Drawing is one of the most effective mediums for expressing and representing an artist’s thoughts and expressions and it is around this fundamental starting point of creation that the collaboration has been formed. Specific programming includes: The New Mexico Museum of Art’s exhibition Lines of Thought: Drawing from Michelangelo to Now; the Museum of Contemporary Native American Art’s exhibition Native Modern: Abstract Expressionism, Colorfield and Native Art Traditions; and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale’s 2017 Summer Festival Season.