Don’t miss this opportunity to attend an intimate tour of Gothic by Design. The Dawn of Architectural Draftsmanship with curator Femke Speelberg.
Packed with loans from collections across Austria, Belgium, Germany, England, France, and Switzerland, the exhibition offers an overview of a drawing tradition that has received little attention within the traditional canon of art history. As evidenced by the Reims Palimpsest – a manuscript containing remnants of architectural designs from ca. 1230-1260 that will open the show – from as early as the thirteenth-century, Gothic architects had embraced the practice of drawing on parchment (and later paper) to design building projects and manage on-site operations. Soon after, various architectural workshops across Western and Central Europe also began to archive this graphic output: a fortuitous impulse that has resulted in the survival of a body of around 600 original drawings for churches, municipal buildings, monuments, furnishings, and other objects. The great majority of these remarkable graphic works reside in European collections, often not far from the original construction sites for which they were conceived. Principally known among locals and small groups of experts, their existence can arguably be counted among the better-kept secrets of art history. The exhibition “Gothic by Design” marks the first time that a representative group of this material will travel to the United States.
This long-awaited exhibition is on view from Thursday April 16 to Sunday July 19, 2026.
Are you interested in learning more about the exhibition from the curator? We invite you to watch the recording of the 2026 Annual Master Drawings Symposium in which Femke Speelberg presents her prize winning research on the rare, monumental design drawings from the gothic era.
This event is organized by The Drawing Foundation.
Image: Lorenz Lechler and workshop, Design for a Monumental Sacrament House (detail), 1502. Pen and two types of ink (carbon black and iron gall) over blind ruling, 17th-century inscription in pen and ink, on parchment. Purchase, The Cloisters Collection, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, and Harry G. Sperling Fund, 2022, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
