John Marciari is Charles W. Engelhard Curator and Head of the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum. Marciari oversees a collection that is renowned throughout the world. Drawings and Prints is one of the largest of the Morgan’s curatorial departments and its approximately 25,000 works span the fourteenth century through the nineteenth century. The department is especially strong in drawings from the Italian, French, Dutch, and British schools, and the list of important artists represented is vast, ranging from Michelangelo and Raphael to Dürer, Rubens, Fragonard, David, Watteau, Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, Ingres, and Degas, among other notables. The department also has the largest and finest collection of Rembrandt etchings in America.

JOHN MARCIARI

So that idea of what the drawings tell us about the artist is another thing that's constantly interesting to me. You, maybe more so than a finished painting, get a sense of what problems an artist is trying to work out along the way. What ideas he has and rejects sometimes tell you an awful lot about the choices made in the final work. I like that insight into the creative process that you get from studying drawings.

This is an excerpt of a 7,000 word interview which will be published and podcasted across a network of participating university journals and national arts/literary magazines.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.