Two disparate exhibitions appearing in New York in 2006 represent an unlikely convergence of wildly different aesthetic missions in venues that could not be more dissimilar. Yet they make the same points—drawing is necessary, so is entertainment, and they are not mutually exclusive.

“Teaching America to Draw: Instructional Manuals and Ephemera, 1745–1925,” at the Grolier Club, revealed how, more than a century and a half ago, educated Americans seldom questioned the value of drawing, and many practiced it, but ongoing discussions about the relevance of drawing in the computer age continue in American art schools, colleges and universities. More astonishing is that most teachers are less well informed on this subject than many of their students, who were first inspired to study drawing after seeing Toy Story or Finding Nemo. The artists who created those films were featured in the Pixar exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. To quote MoMA’s Website: “Demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between traditional and digital media pioneered by the studio over its twenty-year history, ‘Pixar: Twenty Years of Animation,’ is a tribute to the artists whose work has reinvented the genre.” By the end of its run, the exhibition’s catalogues had sold out, testimony to the show’s popularity…