The Art of Disegno: Italian Prints and Drawings from the Georgia Museum of Art, during its stop at the Crocker Art Museum, presented a panoramic display of drawing as an art form from the sixteenth to eighteenth century in Italy. It also included a fine selection of intaglio and woodcut prints. Drawn from the collection of Giuliano Ceseri—who has loaned his collection to the Georgia Museum of Art—and from the collection of the Georgia Museum, the exhibition, curated by Robert Randolf Coleman and Babette Bohn, presented a wide-ranging approach to works on paper from the period, and did so in the pedagogical tradition of the best university museums. As with all collection-based projects, one of the goals is to impress. The project did not fail on this account, as there were a group of many outstanding works. More pressing was the initiative to explore the complexities of the medium and to adumbrate the many uses to which drawing was put during this period.

It hardly bears repeating here that drawing was not an art form intended for display at the time, but was rather a means of communication between an artist and his assistants, his printmaker, his patron, and himself. Drawing could serve as a way to assemble the building blocks for a finished work, synthesizing a composition, or recording an idea for later use. The exhibition’s diversity was its greatest strength. This presentation included, for example, a tapestry cartoon (a rare treat to find on display) by Pietro Antonio de’ Pietri (n.d.), a finely detailed landscape gouache by Marco Ricci (n.d.), and an ink study for an altarpiece by Simone Peterzano (ca. 1575) squared for transfer. In this grouping, one can perceive the compelling diversity of materials on display and the variety of destinations that the exhibition reached along its course. Some of the stars of the show were by lesser-known masters: a sheet of studies (ca. 1526?) by Spanish painter and sculptor Alonso Berruguete is impressive not only for its exceptional draughtsmanship but also for the artful use of negative spaces to make the most of a single sheet of paper (I counted at least twelve studies). A Bust of a Male Saint by Pier Antonio Novelli (n.d.), previously unpublished, is an exquisite and convincing study in expressive cross-hatching, telling a story simply through the facial expressions and gestures of a single figure. Many more established artists were included, some represented through drawings, such as Domenico Campagnola’s The Way to Cavalry (ca. 1517), but more often in the form of prints.

Giambattista Tiepolo’s Death Gives an Audience, from the Capricci (1743–49), is a potent and understated work that allows a viewer to appreciate how the Germanic tradition of ghost stories passed through Italy before Francisco Goya would revitalize it in Spain. Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione series may be a cliché among print enthusiasts; but in an exhibition such as this, Plate XI: The Arch with a Shell Ornament [Later State] (1749–50 and 1761) demonstrates effectively how dark repeating lines can produce an effect as forceful as any painting. Rarer and more impressive still is a landscape etching by Canaletto, View of a Town with a Bishop’s Tomb (1741–44). This view, rather more rustic than the elegant paintings for which Canaletto is famous, demonstrates the artist’s skill at drawing with the etching needle, providing a rich chiaroscuro from the rocky foreground to the lightness of the hill and sky in the distance. Marcantonio Raimondi’s Triumph of Scipio (ca. 1509–10) and Nicolò Boldrini’s Venus and Cupid (1566) provide a fruitful comparison of early engraving to woodcut for the purposes of copying, and disseminating, paintings.

The effect of this plethora of visual delights is to produce a sensation one hardly remembers in the current digital epoch, the pleasure of careful looking. As an art historian, I hope that museums will continue to provide this dimension of human experience that these artists have bequeathed to humanity. An understanding of how to read and to interpret visual materials is frankly what all who teach in the discipline of art history attempt to bestow upon incoming students, but it is fair to say that most of us cannot teach regularly in front of actual works of art. Apart from a couple of museum trips per semester, we are confined to digital projections in classrooms. Drawing exhibitions are somewhat rare, and for good reasons: the works are fragile, sensitive to atmosphere and especially to light, and extended exhibition of this material is bound to deteriorate these timeless resources. So those of us in cities drag our students down to a print room from time to time so they can see what treasures museums shelter in their basements. There we attempt to open to our students’ eager eyes the pleasures of intimate viewing of historic works of art. But what about everyone else? Does not the public also deserve to see such subtle beauty without the benefit of an art historian as guide? Perhaps more importantly, do they have any idea what they are missing?

This is where The Art of Disegno comes in. To create a traveling show from this collection is to aver, in some sense, the historical significance of the collection. However, neither the catalogue, ably penned by Coleman and Bohn, nor the exhibition, as beautifully installed at the Crocker by William Breazeale, aims for a specialist audience. There are new drawings and a little research here that will inform professionals, but the tone of the whole is rather for a generalist. While an art historian may find unexpected treasures in the exhibition, the sense of discovery would be muted and the concept of disegno—the organizing principle of the project, known to any reader of Giorgio Vasari—is too broad to advance any scholarly debates. Rather the goal seems to be to make the best of what could be called the worst of times for some.

While large museums in major metropolitan areas plan and pursue major expansions requiring the munificence of swarms of wealthy donors, small and medium-sized institutions like the Crocker Art Museum struggle to make ends meet. Indeed, they too get sucked into the expansion vortex, and this project was presented in the Crocker’s new wing. These expansions generate some excitement in the community, but they do not necessarily improve financial health in the long term. Meanwhile public universities (and the museums situated on these campuses) find themselves with perhaps even greater financial challenges, especially here in California.

Though it is important to praise the old master drawings and prints that museums conserve for present and future generations, it is also important to praise those struggling to maintain their relevance in an image-saturated digital society. The Art of Disegno represents a bequest in many senses. Let us hope that these loans from Ceseri will one day reside in the collection of the Georgia Museum of Art, but truly the first gift in evidence is the museum’s conviction to tour these works round the country. The Crocker’s generosity is expressed here by finding a beautiful pair of galleries in their new wing in which to display and promote these drawings to the public. I do not have the final exhibition tallies (and I would prefer a world where nobody did), but the purpose is not to present a popular show. It did aim nevertheless to attract a broad public. While many museums consistently tout their loan shows as “masterpieces from the x collection,” it was refreshing, dare I say inspiring, to see the Crocker make a presentation of fifty-three mostly small drawings in two remarkably well-lit rooms without a “masterpiece” in sight.

The economics of a such a situation are not unknown to museum professionals—touring a show is a way to pay for mounting it, and such a project is not going to break the bank for a mid-size museum to support—but it appears to me that such methods of cost-sharing, as the financial officers would say, are going to be more important as museums continue into the future. Only by working collectively, by building on the collective strengths of many institutions, will smaller museums survive the current crisis.