Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints: Anniversary Highlights

The Department of Drawings and Prints boasts more than one million drawings, prints, and illustrated books made in Europe and the Americas from around 1400 to the present day. Because of their number and sensitivity to light, the works can only be exhibited for a limited period and are usually housed in on-site storage facilities. To highlight the vast range of works on paper, the department organizes four rotations a year in The Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery. Each installation is the product of a collaboration among curators and consists of up to one hundred objects grouped by artist, technique, style, period, or subject.

During the celebration of the Museum's 150th anniversary, the Department of Drawings and Prints will present four thematic installations that take an in-depth look at the fabric of its collections. This second installation showcases a selection of highlights from the department’s collection of one million works on paper. The drawings, prints, and books on view were created over the span of five hundred years by celebrated artists active in Europe and the United States.

Arranged in the gallery by theme, the works represent subjects that have been favored in the art world for centuries. Their juxtaposition—such as the pairing of still lifes by Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso, or head studies by Leonardo da Vinci and Ford Madox Brown—exposes how different artists engaged with a particular theme. Together, the selected works tell a larger story about the evolution and continuities in our appreciation of composition, style, technique, and subject matter.