This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: 153 drawings came from 25 sources, notably the print rooms in Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, and Cologne. The exhibition was selected by Dr. Peter Halm, director of the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich, who prepared the catalogue and accompanied the collection to Washington. The first comprehensive exhibition of German master drawings to be assembled, and the first to be sent abroad by the new government of Germany, it provided a survey of German graphic art from a 14th-century drawing to a Self-Portrait by Käthe Kollwitz of c. 1927.

Organization: The exhibition was organized and circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.

Catalog: German Drawings: Masterpieces from Five Centuries, by Peter Halm. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, 1955.

Other Venues: Cleveland Museum of Art
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco