As both material and medium, paper is where ideas are first laid down or mocked up, on loose sheets or bound in sketchbooks. Paper preserves the creative process, from the rawest conceptual expression to the most meticulous renderings. This exhibition celebrates and explores paper as an essential tool of the artist, a foundation for the transmission of the graphic arts and the ideas underpinning them, while challenging preconceptions of the ways in which a work made on or of paper can take shape.

Shedding light on the creative process and the bond between the artist and this most malleable material, Unbound: Works on Paper from the Collection features over 250 rarely or never before exhibited prints, drawings, watercolors, collages, and even sculptures. It draws on Carnegie Museum of Art’s remarkable collection, which began with a single engraving donated by landscape painter Albert Bierstadt in 1896, and which now numbers over 12,000 pieces, ranging from drawings by Benjamin West to watercolors by Edward Hopper, from prints by Utagawa Hiroshige to pastels by Mary Cassatt, from lithographs by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to posters by the Guerrilla Girls. Works by Henri Matisse, Romare Bearden, Mark Manders, Lara Favaretto, and others will explore how humble scraps of paper can be recast into masterpieces of collage and other forms.

Unbound: Works on Paper form the Collection is organized by Akemi May, associate curator of works on paper.