The Drawing Center is pleased to announce Winter Term, a new annual initiative in which the museum will partner with an artist or organization whose mission it is to explore the transformative role that drawing can play in civic and global society. The yearly program, which will consist of public events, classes, and performances, as well as an exhibition, will build a community of people to investigate the efficacy of drawing as a tool for addressing inequity and encouraging social change. In a world ever more in need of human connection and compassion, Winter Term will ask how drawing, the most universal medium, might extend beyond the gallery space to provide concrete tools for collective engagement and collaboration. In this way, Winter Term provides a new model for exhibition making, as well as for the role that art institutions can play in the real world.

For the first session, which will take place from February 24 to March 11, 2018, The Drawing Center invited artist Torkwase Dyson to create an installation and organize a two-week series of classes, discussions, and formal experiments developed from her incipient project the Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Justice—named for Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter and American Civil Rights leader Ida B. Wells. The School will present an experimental curriculum employing techniques culled from the visual arts as well as design theories of geography, infrastructure, engineering, and architecture to initiate dialogue about geographic genealogy in an era of global crisis due to human-induced climate change. Participation in the classes will be by application with portions open to the public. Drawings and sculptures by Dyson will be on view throughout the program’s run and Dyson will be present during select “office hours” to discuss her work and the school with the public.

During an open studio-style installation, Dyson will explicate her own formal concept of “Black Compositional Thought” while terms such as improvisation, nomadicity, and re-orientation will be applied to techniques within abstract drawing that confront issues of environmental justice and the path towards a more equitable future. Confirmed invited guests include artist and designer Ekene Ijeoma; designer, artist, and urbanist Ron Morrison; professor and author Christina Sharpe; and architect and author Mabel O. Wilson. In addition, artist Andres Luis Hernandez will create a drawing score to which artist Zachary Fabri will respond in movement. The result of their collaboration will be documented in drawings and photography.