Towards Visibility

This book is a vital piece of research that surveys key exhibitions that contributed to the integration of, and changing status of, drawing within exhibitions in the UK and Europe from 1964 to 1980. The research looks at how the inclusion of drawing, the reception of new drawing practices and its visibility within seminal exhibitions of other media,  impacted on the curatorial and institutional modes of exhibition making then and thereafter.

To mark the publication of Towards Visibility, Exhibiting Contemporary Drawing, 1964-1980, published by Roven Editions and Musée Jenisch Vevey, Switzerland, three of the contributors will give presentations about their research followed by a panel discussion and the book launch reception.

Contributors are: Julie Enckell Julliard, Director, Musée Jenisch Vevey, who will discuss how Switzerland became a fertile ground for new ways of organising exhibitions within institutions such as at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne and Basel, and the legacy of curators like Harold Szeemann and his followers, who did not distinguish between drawing and other media.  Enckell Julliard suggests: ‘Drawing was now the perfect medium for a certain concept of exhibitions, a concept with its basis in the social and political values of the late 1960s.’

Lucy Steeds, independent curator, writer and lecturer, looks at the history of Britain’s contribution to drawing exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, the ICA and the Lisson Gallery and how expanded ideas of drawing by artists in Britain made an impact on the international scene in the 1960s and 1970s.

Noor Mertens, Curator Modern & Contemporary Art, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, looks at the developments the medium underwent at the hands of a new generation of artists and the way institutions in the Netherlands such as the Kröller-Müller Museum, Stedelijk Museum and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen responded to it from the 1970s onwards.

Julie Enckell Julliard, editor of the publication is Director Musée Jenisch Vevey, Vevey, Switzerland. Previously she was curator of modern and contemporary art at the Museum since 2007. She holds a doctorate in art history and has conducted a number of projects related to contemporary drawing and the concept of collection as an artistic practice.

Lucy Steeds is Editor for Afterall's Exhibition Histories book series on the history of exhibitions of contemporary art of the last fifty years. She is also Pathway Leader for MRes Art: Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins.

Noor Mertens is curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. She also curates her own exhibitions most recently Prospects & Concepts for Art Rotterdam Week 2016.