The Modern Drawing: 100 Works on Paper from The Museum of Modern Art

THE OLD MODERN'S FAREWELL: A SHOW OF ITS BEST DRAWINGS

By John RUSSELL

''THE MODERN DRAWING'' is the title of an exhibition that opens tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art and will run through Jan. 3. After that date, the museum will be closed until the opening of the new building, which is scheduled for next May. The new exhibition might more aptly be called ''The Modern Museum Drawing,'' in that it hews very close indeed to the concept of modernity that was formulated by Alfred H. Barr Jr., the museum's first director. That point of view was shared by colleagues and friends of his, like the late James Thrall Soby, whose bequest to the museum is responsible for some of the more spectacular items in the show, and it has lasted very well. The show consists of 100 ''works on paper'' from the museum's own collection. It begins with Degas, Cezanne, Seurat and van Gogh, and proceeds briskly through movement after movement until it pulls into the parking lot with a group of American artists who first came to notice in the 1950's. The senior artist in the show (Degas) was born in 1834, and among the artists now living no one is less than 50 years old.

New York Times • Arts • page 1 • 1,515 words