Explore Take One of Ways of Seeing with Jack Shear

Ways of Seeing: Three Takes on the Jack Shear Drawing Collection is a three-part exhibition that focuses on the extraordinary drawing collection of artist, curator, and President of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation Jack Shear. Continuing The Drawing Center’s tradition of exhibiting drawings from outstanding public and private collections, Ways of Seeing offers a revealing experiment in connoisseurship and exhibition-making. During the course of the exhibition’s fifteen-week run, artist Arlene Shechet, critic and curator Jarrett Earnest, and Shear himself will each present an installation curated from Shear’s holdings, which consist of nearly seven hundred drawings dating from the sixteenth century to the present.

For the first installation of Ways of Seeing, on view from October 2 through November 7, 2021, Shear adopted a unique approach to hanging his collection, placing drawings alongside, directly on top of, or abutting other works on the basis of intuited visual affinities regardless of context or historical provenance.