© 2026 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Members are invited to join exhibition curators Kevin Salatino, Mel Becker Solomon, and Charlotte Healy, and paper conservator Margaret Holben Ellis for an exclusive look at Willem de Kooning Drawing, the first exhibition to examine the expansive drawing practice of the Dutch-born, American artist.
Rigorously trained in Rotterdam, de Kooning achieved a remarkable command of traditional drawing techniques before immigrating to the United States at age 22. In New York City, de Kooning found work as a house painter, freelance commercial artist, and window display designer, while simultaneously immersing himself in the New York art world. Ultimately he became a key figure of the movement that would be known as “Abstract Expressionism.”
In this member-exclusive talk, the curatorial team explores de Kooning’s continual innovation with experimental drawing techniques and his unique ability to dissolve the boundaries between representation and abstraction, male and female figures, “high” and “low” art forms, and, in particular, the disciplines of drawing and painting.
About the Speakers
Since 2017, Kevin Salatino has served as Chair and Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has curated the exhibitions Ellsworth Kelly: Portrait Drawings (2023) and Mel Bochner Drawings: A Retrospective (2022), among others. Previously he was director of the art collections at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art; curator and head of Prints and Drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and curator of graphic arts at the Getty Research Institute.
Kevin holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University.
Mel Becker Solomon is the associate research curator for the Department of Prints and Drawings, where she specializes in modern and contemporary works on paper. She is a former collection cataloguer in the department (2013–16) and has researched thousands of objects in addition to writing essays on artists Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse. Prior to returning to the Art Institute in 2021, Becker Solomon was curator of the collection at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and a lecturer in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Art Department.
Charlotte Healy is a senior research associate in the Department of Prints and Drawings. She completed her PhD at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with a dissertation on Paul Klee. Previously, she was a Morgan-Menil Predoctoral Fellow and worked at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she contributed to the exhibition Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction (2021–22) and coedited the accompanying catalogue. Her recent publications include essays in Ruth Asawa: Retrospective (2025) and James McNeill Whistler’s Reception and Artistic Legacy: Inventing Whistlerism (2026).
Photo credit: Marcin J. Muchalski, Diamond Shot Studio
Margaret Holben Ellis is the Eugene Thaw Professor Emerita of Paper Conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and former director of the Thaw Conservation Center, Morgan Library & Museum. She was awarded fellowships at the American Academy in Rome, Getty Conservation Institute, and Menil Drawing Institute. She has published essays on Lucas Samaras, Jean Dubuffet, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jackson Pollock, and she edited Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Works of Art on Paper (Getty Conservation Institute, 2014).
If you have any questions about programming, please reach out to [email protected].
Closed captioning will be available for this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email [email protected].
Sponsors
Willem de Kooning Drawing is made possible through the lead support of The Willem de Kooning Foundation.
Major support is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris, The Regenstein Foundation Fund, and the Maureen & Edward Byron Smith, Jr. Exhibition Endowment Fund.
Additional support is provided by the Lewis and Susan Manilow Fund and the Allan McNab Endowed Fund.
Members of the Luminary Trust provide annual leadership support for the museum’s operations, including exhibition development, conservation and collection care, and educational programming. The Luminary Trust includes an anonymous donor, Karen Gray-Krehbiel and John Krehbiel, Jr., Kenneth C. Griffin, the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris, Josef and Margot Lakonishok, Liz and Eric Lefkofsky, Ann and Samuel M. Mencoff, Sylvia Neil and Dan Fischel, Cari and Michael J. Sacks, and the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation.
