| WEB NEWS | Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Macaulay draws crowds to National Building Museum

Exhibit of famed illustrator curated by AU professor

BY SALLY ACHARYA

Eight-year-old Matthew Park is staring at the floor, pondering the meaning of art. He’s in the National Building Museum, and the image, in this instance, is displayed on the gallery floor.

“It looks like they’re little dwarf people, and we’re kind of like giants to them, and that’s their church,” he announces of the image beneath his feet.

The art that has the Potomac, Md., boy and a crowd of other visitors captivated is by David Macaulay, whose pen-and-ink illustrations of architecture have intrigued generations of children and their parents in 23 books over the course of three decades, including Cathedral, Pyramid, and Castle.

His work is now the subject of an exhibition, David Macaulay: The Art of Drawing Architecture, curated by Kathleen Franz, director of the public history program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Photo by Jeff Watts

Author David Macaulay and CAS professor Kathleen Franz, who curated the exhibit of Macaulay's work

Macaulay’s sketch books are on display, along with video shot to explore the architecture of Istanbul and, of course, many of the images he created over the years, which are both playful and painstaking. The image that intrigued Park is a blown-up replication of one of Macaulay’s drawings, placed on the floor so that visitors can explore its unusual perspective.

Macaulay is famed for providing his viewers “with challenging views from above, below and through buildings . . . often unattainable [views] that predate the capabilities of computer software,” Franz explains in some of the text she wrote to illuminate his work.

She calls his process of researching, understanding, and interpreting architecture a “visual archeology” aimed at uncovering the layers of buildings and exploring not only the landscape context but the social and cultural context. “His work isn’t just for kids,” she says.

Last weekend’s exhibition opening drew a large crowd to the National Building Museum, particularly of families that came to participate in a kick-off event that included face painting and the creation of community murals like the one that six-year-old Nadhitha Selvaraj was busily perfecting.

Down in the vast atrium, where cloth was spread out for the murals, Nadhitha crouched with a marker over her sketch of a flower and a girl. “Do you like it?” she asked. Her father, Ramasamy Selvaraj, nodded his approval, but big sister Nila, eight, was too busy with her own image of a bookcase to be distracted. The Selvarajs, of Fairfax, Va., were attracted to the event because of their children’s interest in drawing.

The exhibit was designed to feature family-friendly activities and engage the public in drawing through hands-on activity tables that introduced some of Macaulay’s artistic tricks of the trade.

At a table that invited visitors to practice perspective drawing, grandfather Joseph McInerney of Vienna, Va., watched as 12-year-old Drew and 8-year-old Ellie Sauder of Lousiville, Ky., sketched a railroad track that vanished in the horizon.

Drew wasn’t stopped by a sprained thumb. “See, this is a joke,” he said, pointing at the reproduction he was copying. “These are supposed to be tourists, and they’re coming to see the vanishing point.”

Indeed, the drawing was a joke on artistic conventions, showing tourists gathered to admire the famous “vanishing point.”

A retired elementary school teacher, McInerney used Macaulay’s books with his students.

“I love the early line drawings, but the more I see of color, the more I like that, too,” he said.

Naturally, he has given his grandchildren the books. And naturally, he brought them down to the exhibit—where they were able not only to look at the art, but pick up a pencil and draw from the master.

David Macaulay: The Art of Drawing Architecture continues through Jan. 21 at the National Building Museum, 401 F Street NW.