J'ai eu le privilège de rencontrer Dorothy Edinburg à Boston, la semaine dernière. La première fois, c'était au cocktail donné par Steven et Loïs Kunian, collectionneurs de céramiques vietnamiennes, entre autres.. La seconde, c'était au dîner donné le lendemain par le MFA où j'étais placé à sa gauche. J'ai beaucoup apprécié sa conversation, son humour et son invitation, à mon prochain passage, de venir visiter sa collection qui comprend également des antiquités chinoises jusqu'aux Yuan et quelques early Ming, des antiquités japonaises, des bijoux en or de plusieurs civilisations antiques...

This exhibition celebrates a major gift to be known as the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, which comprises 240 drawings promised or already given to the museum by Dorothy Braude Edinburg. Drawings in Dialogue highlights 166 of the works, including important examples by Renaissance and Baroque masters, fine drawings by 18th- and early 19th-century European and American artists, a stellar display of 19th-century French works, and a superb representation of early 20th-century art.

Edgar Degas. Auguste de Gas (detail), c. 1859. Promised gift, Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection.

As a collector, Dorothy Edinburg is interested above all in acquiring drawings that represent the essence of an artist's achievement--powerful images that are significant, independent statements. Focusing on a work's primacy within an artist's career as well as on its authenticity and condition, Edinburg has amassed a collection of stunning breadth and quality. Her holdings have improved our understanding not only of the oeuvres of individual artists--their thought processes, working methods, and development--but also of relationships among contemporaries. Moreover, each drawing resonates meaningfully with other works in the Art Institute's collection.

In June 2006, the Art Institute of Chicago will celebrate a major gift to its renowned Department of Prints and Drawings of works on paper from the collection of Dorothy Braude Edinburg of Brookline, Massachusetts. The Edinburg collection comprises drawings from the 16th through the 20th centuries and is one of the most important private collections of its kind in the United States. Paramount in Dorothy Edinburg’s quest has been the acquisition of drawings that effectively represent the essence of an artist’s achievement, i.e., powerful images that often relate to works in other media but are significant works that function as independent statements. In addition to the seminal role these drawings often play within an artist’s oeuvre, they must satisfy as well Mrs. Edinburg’s high standards of authenticity and condition—hence, the superb state of the drawings’ preservation.

Drawings in Dialogue and the catalogue that accompanies it will feature approximately 165 of the more than 240 drawings being given to the Art Institute. The exhibition will be organized in three parts: Earlier Masters (62 works), Late Nineteenth Century (41), and Twentieth Century (63). Among the Old Master works are stunning allegorical and religious drawings by Cortona, Giulio Romano, Murillo, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Strozzi, the Tiepolos, and Federico Zuccaro, as well as sparkling landscapes by Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Claude, Corot, David, and Guardi, and figurative studies by Boucher, Magnasco, Piazzetta, Prud’hon, Rosa, and Watteau. Masterpieces of the British and American schools include works by Blake, Fuseli, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Turner, and Whistler. Of special interest among the work of German Romantic artists is a watercolor by Schinkel, and drawings by Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Rich black chalk or ink studies by Bresdin, Courbet, Ensor, Millet, and Toulouse-Lautrec lead to others by Gauguin, Redon, Seurat, and van Gogh. The Braude-Edinburg collection is especially rich in late 19th-century French art, with particular depth in works by Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, and Renoir, continuing through later artists such as Bonnard, Henri Rousseau, and Vuillard. Perhaps the greatest strength of the collection is the group of early 20th-century drawings that capture the richness and diversity of modernism. Among these are outstanding and unusual examples by Braque, Dix, Ernst, Gris, Grosz, Lissitzky, Kandinsky, Kirchner, Klee, Kokoschka, Leger, Masson, Miró, Modigliani, Mondrian, Nolde, Pechstein, Picabia and de Staël, and other masters of Italian Futurism, Russian Constructivism, German Expressionism, and Surrealism. Picasso and Matisse are particularly well-represented. Powerful drawings by such American artists as Bellows and Gorky complete the survey.

All of the exhibited works will be illustrated in full color in the catalogue, accompanied by entries presenting current scholarship in an engaging, accessible way, along with provenance, exhibition, and publication histories. A history of the collection, an overview of its importance, and its relationship to the permanent holdings of the museum will also be included.

Catalogue: 224 pages, 166 color illustrations, 75 duotones, hard-cover only. Distributed by Yale University Press. Authors: The project has been organized by a team of Art Institute curators and research assistants led by Suzanne Folds McCullagh, the Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator of Earlier Prints and Drawings; and Douglas W. Druick, Prince Trust Curator of Prints and Drawings, in collaboration with Brandon Ruud. The catalogue includes contributions by curators Jay A. Clarke, Martha Tedeschi, Stephanie D’Alessandro, Mark Pascale, Gloria Groom, and Peter Zegers, as well as Research Assistant Emily Vokt, with Lia Markey, Lucia Tantardini, and Michelle McCormick. The catalogue will be available in the Museum Shop in late June.

"Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master through Modern - The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection". June 3–July 30, 2006. Regenstein Hall