I recently attended an art exhibit at the Getty Center in Los Angeles called “Drawing on Blue: European Drawings on Blue Paper, 1400s–1700s.” I’d never given much thought to the color of a drawing’s paper, but as the exhibition and accompanying publication explained, blue paper “had a profound impact on early modern European artistic production.”
The role of paper is a fascinating page in the larger story of fine art, as it turns out, and curators of works on paper have somewhat unique positions. To support their endeavors, the Getty Foundation has been funding curators of prints and drawings for the past seven years through The Paper Project, providing $8.7 million to 72 institutions to date. This funding includes Getty’s most recently announced round of grantmaking for The Paper Project, which will also be its last: nearly $1.3 million to 13 institutions.
The Getty Foundation supports individuals and institutions advancing the understanding and preservation of the visual arts. The foundation is one part of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world’s wealthiest arts institution, and has been led by foundation director Dr. Joan Weinstein since 2019.
But even an arts grantmaker of Getty’s size couldn’t continue funding as usual when COVID hit. The Getty Foundation pivoted to a strategic form of funding that involved, among other things, investing in specific areas for a handful of years, then moving on. Works on paper is one such area. “The goal is providing training and professional development to curators to work with prints and drawings,” said Heather MacDonald, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation.
The 2024 grants have an additional aim: bringing curators and other experts together, face to face, and letting them get up close and personal with the work. For two years during the height of the pandemic, all in-person curatorial development was put on hold: no convenings, no conferences, no crowding together in cramped print and drawing cabinets with peers. For this final funding year, Getty is making up for lost time by funding only in-person professional workshops and traveling seminars.
“We really went all-in,” MacDonald said. “It’s kind of exceptional to have a fully funded opportunity to see the collections and work with your peers and these incredible senior experts that are brought in for these programs. To have a few days a week, or even 10 days, to be in conversation with peers and senior experts, to look at collections and have hands-on opportunities such as printmaking workshops — these have proven very popular.”
The 2024 Paper Project grantees include U.S. and European museums such as the Menil Collection in Houston, Oklahoma Contemporary, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, and Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, as well as other organizations with print and drawing collections such as the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Bibliotheca Hertziana (a German research institute located in Rome) in partnership with Lise Meitner Group, one of the most important print collections in Italy.
Other winners include the Center for Book Arts in New York City, the Brooklyn-based Dieu Donné, a nonprofit cultural institution focused on fine art papermaking and paper-based art, University of Virginia, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Universalmuseum Joanneum and University of New Mexico.
Why supporting works on paper matters
So what’s so special about curating prints and drawings? For one thing, while works on paper generally comprise art museums’ largest collections, they tend to be marginalized and undervalued, presented in peripheral rooms, not showing up as key players in blockbuster exhibitions. Exhibitions of prints and drawings often lack accompanying catalogs that expound upon the research and document a curator’s thinking.
In addition, while works on paper can feel immediate and intimate to a viewer, they are vulnerable to light exposure. Because of this, they tend to come out of storage only for short-term exhibitions of six months or less. This limited, partial display further contributes to a lack of regard for works on paper.
Print and drawing curators, meanwhile, are doing some of the most interesting work in fine art curation, MacDonald said, exploring and reshuffling their institutions’ collections to create new, theme-driven shows. “It’s a constant practice, and very labor intensive. It requires a lot of research and creativity. You’re constantly remixing and reinterpreting your collection as you rotate it into different galleries.”
The Drawing on Blue exhibit I saw was a COVID-era project, which speaks to another special aspect of the job: Paper curators create exhibitions by delving into their own institutions’ holdings rather than through expensive borrowing. Their nimbleness and the ability to create shows without paying to borrow works are good skills when budgets are tight, MacDonald said. “Everyone can learn from that approach. In economic downturns, museums tend to turn to their own collection and what they can do with that.”
A grant to look at the paper itself
The Menil Collection in Houston is using its $158,000 grant to hold a week-long intensive workshop about the materiality of paper. The workshop, called “Inside Drawings,” focuses on a different aspect of paper each day. One day revolves around the physical and aesthetic qualities of paper, another on drawing mediums — chalk, pencil, etc. A third day delves into the condition of artwork and how paper behaves with time and the elements. (Applications for curator participants are open through March 22 on the Menil website.)
“When we talked about applying for this, we had a discussion about what would be of most benefit to the knowledge base of these curators at this stage of their career,” said Jan Burandt, the Menil Collection’s paper conservator and co-organizer of the workshop, along with Edouard Kopp. “The curatorial staff thought that looking at the materiality of paper would bring the biggest benefit.” Curators Kelly Montana and Kirsten Marples contributed to the development of the workshop, as did Martin Schleuse, manager of foundation relations.
“This funding allows us to approach this question with a group of 16 early-stage curators from around the world, about half domestic and half international,” Burandt said. “The Getty is funding an incredibly rich program pulling on the knowledge of staff, traveling experts and the participants.”
The workshop is also focused on community-building and collaborative conversation, and will include shared meals, a visit to an artist’s studio, and a pre-workshop Zoom convening. The Menil Collection places a great deal of value on works on paper, as evidenced by its Drawing Institute, a free-standing building on its 30-acre campus in the leafy, low-rise Montrose neighborhood in Houston. “The funding the Getty is giving us is allowing us to bring this mission we have to a much larger audience. It’s not just a lecture but dialogue and exchange,” Burandt said. “We would not have had the ambition to bring this international group together without the support of the Getty. Well, we might have had the ambition; we just wouldn’t have had the funding.”
Burandt shared her own fascination with drawing. “I have a Dorothea Rockburne quote on my wall: ‘Drawing is the bones of thought.’ I love that so much. How artists look at drawing is important to how they look at their work. To the many artists who do draw, they often find it the practice that is closest to their heart and informs their broader process.”
From the museum to the world
The grant to the Menil will fund what Burandt hopes will be ongoing connections and conversations among the curators who meet in Houston. For MacDonald, elevating the art and boosting the careers of its curators is another goal.
“From the outset of this initiative, there has been this issue of, ‘Do people really value what I do?’” MacDonald said. “The visibility and celebration of these curators is terrific. Every notice and attention paid to the work is a terrific benefit to these departments.”
