For Nader Tehrani, professor at and former dean of the architecture school, drawing and representation are essential to Cooper Union’s pedagogy. “The presence of freehand drawing as a mode of thinking is probably at its best in her class. I think that all that we have made about going completely digital was a false debate,” he said. “Both allow for a different type of instrumentality with respect to thinking, the ability to see in a different way.”

Gussow’s paintings and drawings can be found in museum collections from the Brooklyn Museum and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, to the Dallas Museum of Art. Solo exhibitions of her work have been staged at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center—she was a visiting artist at the school from 1982 to 1983—and The Center for Contemporary Art, in Bedminster, New Jersey, among other venues.

Robert and Dave, oil on linen (1996-1997). Image courtesy the artist, The Cooper Union/João Enxuto

In the lead up to the exhibition, Gussow and Steven Hillyer, a 1990 graduate of the School of Architecture and current director of Cooper Union’s Architecture Archive, rifled through iterations of pieces to be included in the show and quickly realized the difficulty of assembling a lifetime of work within the confines of the Houghton Gallery. (Hillyer is also a subject, with his husband, of one of the exhibition’s charcoal drawings.) They divided Retrospective into three themes: portraits, largely of Gussow’s family and friends, many of whom are former students and colleagues; drawings and paintings of dresses—in this circumstance, those worn by German ballet dancer Karin von Aroldingen; and still life-style studies of dwellings and floral arrangements. In total, 86 works are on view as part of the exhibition.

Gussow’s style and approach is myriad. Some works draw upon negative space to highlight their subjects while others deploy layered impasto to establish depth and contrast. In the case of the charcoal portraits, viewers see a greater exercise of realism. But across the board, the work displays a great care of subject and setting, and, in a tour with the artist, a plethora of personal anecdotes. After all, as Gussow notes, “these images fill my studio and my home. Their memories stay with me and keep me company long after a work is completed.”

More information about Sue Ferguson Gussow: Retrospective, including gallery hours, can be found here. The show is free and open to the public.