David Nolan Gallery

The Collector and the Art Dealer: Jack Shear and David Nolan, A 20 Year Adventure with Drawings, on view from January 13 – February 11, 2023, features a selection from the works that artist, curator, and President of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation Jack Shear acquired in collaboration with gallerist David Nolan in building his extraordinary drawing collection. Formed mostly over a twenty-year period, Shear’s collection consists in over seven hundred drawings dating from the 16^th century to the present. A significant part of the collection is the result of Shear’s personal and professional relationship with David Nolan. Over the past two decades, Nolan’s eye and expertise have helped forge innovative connections among existing and subsequent acquisitions.

“My gallery opened in the late 1980s to raise the consciousness of works on paper without any restrictions. This exhibition demonstrates the unlimited possibilities in putting together a collection of drawings today. Jack Shear’s is arguably one of the great collections of drawings in private hands that has such challenging breath, and is still a very personal collection.

I sold to Jack the first artworks in 2002. Without realizing it, he and I embarked on a collaboration of works on paper that kept pushing the boundaries of art making over five hundred years. Not just masterpieces but investigative drawings that, in the words of Walter Bareiss (whose collection of drawings my gallery exhibited in the 1990s), give the spirit and essence of art making.

The exhibition at David Nolan Gallery will highlight selected works that the Collector and the Dealer chose in unison. The show will present a collaborative installation between the two partners in this long adventure, tracing the chronology of and the reasoning behind Jack Shear’s acquisition process.”-David Nolan