With the “death of drawing” proclaimed to us from all sides—but, at the same time, enmeshed within an intensely visual culture, and therefore continuing to be receptive to the all-encompassing “cognitive, creative, and communicative” possibilities inherent in putting pencil to paper—we are delighted to discover this historical beacon on page 114 of the volume under review: Passed into law by its legislature five years after the end of the Civil War, and as a result of having foreseen a need to rapidly modernize its own industrial design capabilities, the Massachusetts Drawing Act of 1870 established instruction in that subject as compulsory within the state’s school systems.
Indeed, an actual and quite relevant piece of history—and this but one small section of the remarkable tapestry that Seymour Simmons presents to us in The Value of Drawing in the Visual Arts and across Curricula. The author, moreover—faithfully following each of its threads—does...