If you visit the museum these days, you’ll find two works of art drawn directly onto its walls. How did they get there and who made them?
One of the founders of minimalism and conceptual art, Sol LeWitt, began making diagrams and guidelines in 1968 that explained how to create two-dimensional images. Although the artist died in 2007, his works are continuously finding new life through new installations. LeWitt saw his ideas as the art, rather than stable, physical objects.
The museum borrowed the instructions to create two of LeWitt’s drawings from the artist’s estate. Professional installers from the estate visited Athens to follow those instructions and to train museum staff and Lamar Dodd School of Art students so that they could help make these images. Drawing number one oh three eight, to the right of the museum’s auditorium, features bars of color within a square. Drawing number eight six nine takes up the long wall that leads from the side entrance to the rest of the lobby and is part of LeWitt’s copied lines series. The artist designed these to be installed by multiple drafters who take turns drawing lines on the wall. The first drafter drew a prototype line in black, which the other drafters attempted to copy below in red, yellow and blue. Each line took about forty-five minutes to add to the wall, and the result almost resembles a game of telephone, with the shape of the line varying slightly over time. As LeWitt said, “each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently.”