The Take a Closer Look program promotes new readings of our prints and drawings collection which is predominantly composed of materials from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These materials were catalogued as they entered the collection at different moments of the CCA’s history. Looking at them again today, with a contemporary lens, allows to ask different questions than when they were originally described and to offer new interpretations, distinct from those of other collections of antique drawings. With this objective, the CCA invited a few scholars to study these holdings during a week-long residency in 2021 and 2023. Their findings are used to update and enhance the descriptions of the works, but the scholars also talk to us, the readers, and explain why we should take a closer look at these drawings.

Elisabeth Narkin is Image Specialist for French Art for the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Take a Closer Look is supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.