As part of a tribute to Julius S. Held, professor emeritus of art history at Barnard and Columbia, the Wallach Art Gallery presents an exhibition of sixty-four drawings from his collection. Formed over a lifetime and in close partnership with his late wife, Professor Held's collection represents an impressive range of European and American art, from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Although it does include drawings by major master—Rubens, van Dyck, Jordaens, Guercino, Tiepolo among them—the collection was assembled with the modest means of a professor with a keen and catholic art-historical eye. It is especially rich in drawings by German artists, reflecting Professor Held's own background, just as the Swedish drawings recall the origins of his wife. The selection made for the exhibition in the Wallach Art. Gallery represents the range of the collec-tion, the breadth of Professor Held's taste: many of the drawings are of particular art-historical interest—linking, for example, a design by Michelangelo possibly transmitted through a drawing by Rubens and copied by Watteau.
Thirty of the drawings in the exhibition are being lent by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which acquired 202 drawings from the Held collection in 1984.
