Art on Paper: Highlights from the American Collection

For more than two centuries, American artists have created engaging art on paper using a rich array of media including graphite, charcoal, pen and ink, watercolor, pastel, engraving, etching, woodcut and lithography.

For the first time, the Nelson-Atkins has a dedicated space to display works on paper from our collection of American art. Installations will rotate every six months in order to display the variety of the collection to visitors and to protect it from overexposure to damaging light.

This inaugural exhibition features highlights of the collection, including exceptional examples of portraiture, figure studies, illustrations, domestic and foreign landscapes, scenes of everyday life, and imaginative fantasies. In many instances, these highlights illuminate additional dimensions of American artists whose paintings are among the treasures of the Museum’s newly reinstalled American collection.