“The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists” includes work by artists detained within the prison system colloquially known as the Gulag. Used to imprison political opponents and suspected enemies of the USSR from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, the Gulag constituted a network of forced-labor camps primarily located in Siberia. . Alexey Wangenheim, an artist featured in “The Pencil Is a Key,” was imprisoned in the Gulag’s first “rehabilitation center” after being accused of treasonous subterfuge in falsifying weather reports. As a meteorologist, Wangenheim continued to focus on natural sciences while incarcerated by writing and illustrating numerous educational postcards to his daughter, which included depictions of local flora and fauna, views of the White Sea, and even the aurora borealis. .⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists” is on view in our Main Gallery and Drawing Room until January 5, 2020. Throughout the run of the exhibition, admission ...