About
The Drawing Foundation
The Drawing Foundation is a non-profit that celebrates the art of drawing by nurturing an inclusive community of creators, curators, conservators, dealers, private and public institutions, students at all levels, and enthusiasts. Through collaborative initiatives that center drawings, The Drawing Foundation facilitates engagement with collections and scholarship for the professional and devotee alike through in-person and virtual opportunities.
Founded in 2023, The Drawing Foundation builds on the dedication of co-founders Allison Wucher and Simon Levenson to all things drawing, and their shared commitment to creating opportunities for community engagement.
Allison and Simon brought on Stephen Ongpin of Stephen Ongpin Fine Art to serve as a board member and art historian and curator Daniella Berman to serve as Head of Special Projects and Strategic Initiatives. With this inaugural team’s broad range of expertise and long-standing commitment to the medium of drawing, The Drawing Foundation is poised to serve as a center for engagement with drawing in all its forms for audiences around the world. The Drawing Foundation is committed to cultivating a network of individuals interested in and passionate about drawings through in-person and online initiatives. The Drawing Foundation’s website serves as a platform to connect audiences to the many resources, events, institutions, organizations, and programming dedicated to drawing across time periods and around the world.
Throughout the year, The Drawing Foundation will organize events advancing knowledge and scholarship about drawings in collaboration with various partners. For example, The Drawing Foundation is the institutional event organizer for Master Drawings New York, an annual art fair dedicated to showcasing Old Master through Contemporary drawings.
The Drawing Foundation seeks to collaborate with institutions, organizations, and individuals in various ways. If you are interested in joining our platform, working together on a future event, or sharing information on upcoming exhibitions or programs, please contact us: [email protected]
Our mission
The Drawing Foundation is a community-focused non-profit dedicated to the study and appreciation of drawings. The Drawing Foundation seeks to cultivate a network of individuals interested in and passionate about drawings, connecting arts professionals and practitioners to emerging scholarship and innovative programming, and to each other in an effort to promote engagement with drawing–both historic and contemporary practices–and its various audiences. By nurturing a community of individuals devoted to this fundamental form of mark-making, The Drawing Foundation will help foster the next generation of scholars and students, curators and audiences, dealers and collectors, and artists and art-lovers.
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Anonymous Gift in memory of Henry and Margaret Rudkin.
Team
Co-founder
Allison Wucher
Allison Wucher is an art world professional and consultant with wide-ranging expertise and experience.
Allison is the Associate Director of the Ellsworth Kelly Studio and Jack Shear Collection. She is the owner of Silverpoint Fine Art, an art advisory, estate and collection management firm, and was formerly the Director of Master Drawings New York from 2016-2022.
Co-founder
Simon Levenson
As the founder of Drawing New York and Drawing America, artist and instructor Simon Levenson has an enduring passion for connecting makers to opportunities, to one another, and to arts institutions. In these and other endeavors, Simon has helped grow online communities with an eye to reaching audiences across the United States and abroad.
Simon teaches drawing at The Morgan Library and Museum, The National Arts Club, and oil painting at The Art Students League.
Founding Board Member
Stephen Ongpin
Stephen Ongpin has over thirty years of experience as a dealer in Old Master, 19th century and Modern drawings.
Stephen Ongpin Fine Art is based in Mayfair in London and specialises in Master drawings, watercolours and oil sketches dating from the 16th through the 20th centuries.
Head of Special Projects & Strategic Initiatives
Daniella Berman, Ph.D.
An art historian and curator specializing in European art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Daniella Berman has contributed to many publications and exhibitions, including Horace Vernet (Château de Versailles, 2023) and Jacques-Louis David: Radical Draftsman (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022). Daniella has held various positions at The Met, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, and Yale University Press.
Daniella serves as Vice President of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA), and is co-editor of Duke House and the Making of Modern New York: Lives and Afterlives of a Fifth Avenue Mansion (Brill, 2022).
Legal Counsel
Christopher J. Robinson
Chris is Of Counsel at Rottenberg Lipman Rich P.C. and focuses his practice on art law and intellectual property law. Prior to obtaining his law degree from Fordham University School of Law in 2001, Chris was a dealer in Old Master and Nineteenth Century drawings.