Kevin Salatino

For the 49th episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with Kevin Salatino, chair and Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, about “Willem de Kooning Drawing,” the exhibition and catalogue published by the Art Institute of Chicago in association with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and distributed by Yale University Press. 

For an artist predominantly known as a painter, de Kooning built his entire practice on drawing. Salatino makes this the through line of the exhibition—the way de Kooning thought and worked across every medium. He explains the deliberate choice to leave the colon out of the title: “Willem de Kooning Drawing” holds both the noun and the verb, the object on the page and the act that made it. That reading references the artist’s beginnings, when de Kooning trained as a draftsman from the age of twelve and arrived in New York with a command of traditional technique no other painter of the New York School possessed. The conversation follows that foundation forward through a lifetime of reworking and re-skilling, de Kooning’s refusal to separate abstraction from figuration, and his sense that content is a glimpse—something caught at the edge of vision and held until it becomes permanent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin Salatino is chair and Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. He led the organization of “Willem de Kooning Drawing,” the Art Institute's first solo exhibition of the artist since 1969, developed in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and in consultation with The Willem de Kooning Foundation.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

“Willem de Kooning Drawing” is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through September 20, 2026, then travels to the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, October 9, 2026–January 17, 2027. The exhibition gathers nearly 250 works from public and private collections, spanning the early 1920s through the 1980s.

PURCHASE THE BOOK

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300288544/willem-de-kooning-drawing/

PARTNER

This episode is sponsored by Brown & Brown, whose fine art specialists advise museums, private collectors, artists, galleries, and artist-endowed foundations around the world on insurance and risk management. Their team combines art-world knowledge with experience navigating complex risks, including loan and consignment agreements, storage, transit, and conservation. Brown & Brown works across the fine art insurance market to help customers secure solutions tailored to their collections and objectives. Learn more at BBrown.com/fineart

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"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.

Music composed by Bob Golden