This exhibition celebrates the remarkable holdings of 19th-century French drawings at The Morgan Library and Museum and the Menil Collection, institutions with an ongoing collaboration to foster meaningful conversation about drawing. The show includes works on paper by five artists who importantly impacted the development of drawing at the formative beginnings of modernism — Eugène Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne and Odilon Redon.

Becoming Modern posits that some of the most exciting breakthroughs in the medium took place in the 19th century, as academic models of draftsmanship, traditionally practiced as a preparatory means of study and in anticipation of sculpture or painting, gave rise to the production of independent drawings. Artists were regarding drawing as a space of invention and as a crucible for new ways of thinking about artistic process and the formation of thought, not simply as a space of representation and description.

On view through June 14, 2015.