With the advent of Modernism in the 20th century, line became its own definitive subject for artists, who no longer used it merely for representational purposes. Line: Making the Mark presents examples created since that historic shift by artists including Louise Bourgeois, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Sol LeWitt, and Barnett Newman.

The exhibition explores the sundry ways that artists are making marks, whether directly or indirectly. Artists may press pencil directly to paper or brush ink right onto a surface; or they may create their work indirectly, through the printmaking process—first drawing on stone, carving into wood, or etching into metal, and then transferring the marks to paper or other media.

Line: Making the Mark features some 50 drawings and prints from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Among the other artists represented are Josef Albers, Brice Marden, Sam Messenger, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, and Richard Serra.