In the fall of 1971, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA) hosted Sol LeWitt as a visiting artist and lecturer. Not a fan of public speaking, LeWitt's 'lecture' instead encouraged students to work with him on a new piece, Wall Drawing #118, comprised of "fifty randomly placed points all connected by straight lines," his first wall drawing in Boston. And now, for the first time in more than forty years, Wall Drawing #118 will be drafted and installed at SMFA once again this fall. Its display will serve as the catalyst for Something Along Those Lines, a dynamic group exhibition bringing together artists who blend conceptual, sculptural and performative engagements with the formal elements of drawing.

On view in SMFA's Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery, the exhibition features video, installation, sculpture, performance and multiple forms of wall drawing by international artists Adel Abdessemed (Sphère 1m69), Ann Carlson + Mary Ellen Strom (Four Parallel Lines), Carlos Cruz-Diez (Physichromie 2385), Gego (Untitled (Bicho)), Felix Gonzalez-Torres ("Untitled"), Sol LeWitt (Wall Drawing #118), Bruce Nauman (Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square), Fred Sandback (Untitled) and Lawrence Weiner (WITHIN A REALM OF RELATIVE FORM).

"This exhibition concerns itself with drawing as much as with drawing connections, marked by modern and contemporary examinations—and expansions—of form," says Evan J. Garza, SMFA Exhibitions and Public Programs Coordinator and curator of the exhibition. "It is incredibly exciting to connect distant points in the history of the School in this way, especially through the influential work of Sol LeWitt, which will be explored further in the 2012 Beckwith Lecture with LeWitt scholar Veronica Roberts."

The entire exhibition will be on view September 13–November 3, and the general public is welcome to view the installation process of Wall Drawing #118 September 13–19, which will be executed by a LeWitt drafter and SMFA students. A reception on September 20 from 6–8pm will celebrate the work's completion.


Related events

Wednesday, September 19, 6pm
SMFA Beckwith Lecture "Boston's First Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing"
Veronica Roberts, Director of Research, Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing Catalogue Raisonné and Adjunct Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art will discuss the challenges and rewards of researching LeWitt's unique body of conceptual art, highlighting the special importance he attached to his collaborations with art students around the world.
Alfond Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Thursday, September 20, 6–8 pm
Reception celebrating the completion of Wall Drawing #118
Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery, SMFA

For more information, visit www.smfa.edu/something-along-those-lines. 


About the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:
Founded in 1876 and accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is one of only three art schools in the country affiliated with a major museum—the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Our mission is to provide an education in the fine arts—for undergraduate and graduate artists—that is interdisciplinary and self-directed. This education values cultural, artistic and intellectual diversity; it embraces a wide range of media; it stresses the development of individual vision and its relation to culture in general; it values equally the knowledge gained by thinking and doing; it is deeply engaged with the world as a whole. If the mission is constant, its practice is always transforming.