The Long Road Gallery is perhaps the pinnacle of artistic achievement in this museum, the result of hours of labor on a par with War and Peace or Kristin Lavransdatter-- at least I like to fancy such thoughts in my less lucid moments. Like the two series displayed earlier, these can be laid end to end to form one continuous, massive sketch, because that is the way they were originally drawn. As with the other series, these were considered important enough to redraw as my artistic skills improved, and the museum patron will note the evolution of the traffic signals in some of the sketches that were not redrawn versus those that were. Ever-present are the elements common to many of the sketches: the overdraws, the redraws, the late additions, the blackouts, the subtle jokes and riffs, and the general lack of people, cars, and animals to distract from the beautiful scenery.
Perhaps the least sensible element of this series is the mostly consistent use of New York City-type Deskey lamp posts on what appears to be largely a rural road-- most of which probably would not have lamp posts at all, much less individual aluminum posts as perhaps opposed to lamps attached to utility poles.
As always, forty-five years of storage in poorly-controlled environments has taken its toll on these masterpieces, and they have become yellowed; only obvious stains have been retouched. In cases in which the sketches were redrawn, we provide a link to the original, but we'll present these as a group without individual comment.
