The Menil Collection The Menil Collection

The 2022–2023 Menil Drawing Institute Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Isabel Bird, delivers a lecture that considers how artists learn to draw, through a close look at select drawings in the Menil’s collection, including works by Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Arturo Herrera, Lee Krasner, and Andy Warhol, among others. Learning-to-draw techniques covered will range from life drawing and linear perspective to the contour line and the coloring book. Following the lecture, some of the discussed works will be on view in the Janie C. Lee Drawing Room.

Isabel Bird is a PhD Candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. While at the Menil, she is working on a dissertation that studies the role of drawing in twentieth-century art practices through the medium’s complex relationship to notions of skill, discipline, and instruction. Her project sets the drawing practices of four artists—Ruth Asawa, Adrian Piper, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, and Sturtevant—against a longer history of drawing education and argues that these artists’ practices fundamentally challenged longstanding learning-to-draw techniques and exercises, from linear perspective to the life drawing class.

This program takes place in the Menil Drawing Institute, located at 1412 W. Main St. Additional information regarding accessibility and parking can be found here.

As always, Menil programs are free and open to all.