Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, will present “Alex Katz | Out of Sight,” a landmark exhibition of drawings by Alex Katz, on view from May 21 to October 11, 2026. The show brings together more than 80 works, including never-before-exhibited drawings from Katz’s personal collection, pieces from the museum’s holdings, and loans from private and institutional collections. It spans Katz’s career from high school sketches to recent portrait drawings, featuring preparatory studies, collages, cartoons, and related paintings, and is organized by Kiko Aebi, Katz Curator at the Colby Museum.
This exhibition matters because it is the first in over 30 years to unite drawings from across Katz’s eight-decade career, offering an intimate look at his creative process and the foundational role of drawing in his practice. As the museum of record for Katz’s work, Colby College Museum of Art provides new research that sheds light on his working methods, revealing how his experiments on paper directly inform his iconic large-scale paintings. The show underscores the importance of drawing as a daily practice and a key to understanding one of America’s most influential living artists.