Compass in Hand

Compass in Hand brings together approximately 250 works from the Judith Rothschild Foundation’s extraordinary gift of drawings to The Museum of Modern Art, in 2005. Formed by Harvey S. Shipley Miller, the Foundation’s trustee, the collection comprises over 2,500 works on paper by more than 650 artists and was conceived to be the widest possible cross-section of contemporary drawing made primarily within the past twenty years. An extended essay by Christian Rattemeyer highlights the primary curatorial concepts and categories of the collection and a conversation between Harvey S. Shipley Miller and Gary Garrels, former Chief Curator of the Department of Drawings at MoMA, recounts the objectives and processes through which the collection was originally formed, providing a unique panorama on the state of drawing today.