The Drawing Center is pleased to announce Winter Term, a new annual initiative in which the museum will partner with an artist or organization whose mission it is to explore the transformative role that drawing can play in civic and global society. The yearly program, which will consist of public events, classes, and performances as well as an exhibition, will build a community of people to investigate the efficacy of drawing as a tool for addressing inequity and encouraging social change. In a world ever more in need of human connection and compassion, Winter Term will ask how drawing, the most universal medium, might extend beyond the gallery space to provide concrete tools for collective engagement and collaboration. In this way, Winter Term provides a new model for exhibition making as well as for the role that art institutions can play in the real world.


For the first session, which will take place in February and March of 2018, The Drawing Center has invited New York-based artist Torkwase Dyson to create an installation and organize a two-week series of classes, discussions, and formal experiments developed from her incipient project the Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Justice—named for Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter and American Civil Rights leader Ida B. Wells. The School will present an experimental curriculum employing techniques culled from the visual arts as well as design theories of geography, infrastructure, engineering, and architecture to initiate dialogue about geographic genealogy in an era of global crisis due to human-induced climate change. Participation in the course will be by application with portions open to the public.


During an open studio-style installation, Dyson will explicate her own formal concept of “Black Compositional Thought” while terms such as improvisation, nomadicity, and re-orientation will be applied to techniques within abstract drawing that confront issues of environmental justice and the path towards a more equitable future. Confirmed invited guests include architect Mabel Wilson, curator Rujeko Hockley, artist and designer Ekene Ijeoma, designer and educator Ronald Morrison, choreographer Dean Moss, and artist Zachery Fabri who will engage in a site-specific performance. Following the residency, the museum will release a publication with contributions from artists Dawoud Bey and Allison Janae Hamilton as well as poet Ronaldo Wilson among others.

Organized by Claire Gilman, Chief Curator.