S C H E D U L E O F E X H I B I T I O N S
T H R O U G H EAR L Y 2 0 1 6
SRGM_ph060 |
The information below is subject to change.
On Kawara—Silence
Through May 3, 2015
Through the application of radically restricted means, the art of On Kawara (1933–2014) engages
nothing less than the personal and historical consciousness of place and time. Kawara’s work is often
associated with the rise of Conceptual art. Yet in its complex wit and philosophical reach, it also stands
well apart. Organized with the close cooperation of the artist, On Kawara—Silence will be the first full
representation of Kawara’s practice since 1963, the ongoing production of paintings and other kinds of
work that serve to identify the date and place of the artist’s whereabouts on any given day. The
exhibition will include every category of the artist’s output: Date Paintings (the Today series), postcards
(I Got Up), telegrams (I Am Still Alive), maps (I Went), lists of names (I Met), newspaper cuttings (I
Read), an inventory of his paintings (Journals), and the “calendars” (One Hundred Years and One Million
Years). It will also feature rare works from 1964 and 1965, which heralded the emergence of the practice
for which Kawara would later become well known. The Guggenheim will organize a continuous live
reading of Kawara’s One Million Years, which will occur at the museum several days each week for the
duration of the exhibition. The exhibition is organized by Jeffrey Weiss, Senior Curator, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, with Anne Wheeler, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
The Leadership Committee for On Kawara—Silence is gratefully acknowledged for its support, with
special thanks to David Zwirner, New York/London; Glenstone; Leonard and Louise Riggio; and
Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf and Berlin. This exhibition is also supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts.
The Hugo Boss Prize 2014: Paul Chan, Nonprojections for New Lovers
March 6–May 13, 2015
The Hugo Boss Prize 2014 has been awarded to Paul Chan (b. 1973, Hong Kong), who is the tenth artist
to receive the biennial honor. Established in 1996 to recognize significant achievement in contemporary
art, the prize carries an award of $100,000 and is administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation. Chan was selected by an international jury of curators and museum directors, from a list of
five finalists, which included Sheela Gowda, Camille Henrot, Hassan Khan, and Charline von Heyl.
Previous winners include Matthew Barney (1996), Douglas Gordon (1998), Marjetica Potrč (2000),
Pierre Huyghe (2002), Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004), Tacita Dean (2006), Emily Jacir (2008), Hans-Peter
Feldmann (2010), and Danh Vo (2012). The Hugo Boss Prize 2014: Paul Chan, Nonprojections for New
Lovers is organized by Katherine Brinson, Curator, Contemporary Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, and Susan Thompson, Assistant Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. This exhibition
is made possible by HUGO BOSS.
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974–2014
March 13–June 3, 2015
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility. Mirror Works and Drawings 1974–2014 will be the
first U. S. museum exhibition of mirror works and drawings by the Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy
Farmanfarmaian (b. 1924). The presentation will focus on Monir’s sculptural and graphic oeuvre over a
career of more than forty years. Infinite Possibility will include early wood, plaster, and mirror reliefs; a
series of large-scale geometric mirror sculptures; and an impressive body of works on paper. The
majority of the selected works are from the artist’s own collection; many have not been publicly
displayed since the 1970s. Monir’s prolific oeuvre is characterized by the merging of visual and spatial
experience coupled with the aesthetic traditions of Islamic architecture and decoration, allowing for, in
the artist’s words, “infinite possibility.” Considered in relation with the Guggenheim’s historical
commitment to abstraction and internationalism, this presentation will offer a timely opportunity to
contemplate the artist’s rich body of work in its own right and as part of an increasingly transnational
perspective on artistic production and its reception. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Infinite Possibility.
Mirror Works and Drawings 1974-2014 is organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art,
Porto, Portugal. The Leadership Committee for Infinite Possibility is gratefully acknowledged for its
support, with special thanks to Simin N. Allison, Maryam Eisler, Maryam Panahy Ansary, Nader Ansary,
The Soudavar Memorial Foundation, Mohammed Afkhami, Patricia and Alexander Farman-Farmaian,
Tad and Jackson Freese, Haines Gallery, Yasmine Nainzadeh and Sara Nainzadeh, Nazgol and Kambiz
Shahbazi, The Third Line, Taymour Grahne, and Roya and Massoud Heidari.
A Year with Children 2015
May 1–June 17, 2015
A Year with Children 2015 will feature 125 works of art created by New York City public school students
who participated in the Guggenheim’s artist-in-residence program Learning Through Art (LTA) during
the 2014–15 school year. Representing ten elementary schools in each of the city’s five boroughs, this
annual exhibition will be on view at the museum May 1 through June 17. Learning Through Art and A
Year with Children 2015 are generously supported by The Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, The Seth
Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, The Land of Nod, and the New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional funding is provided by
Deutsche Bank; Gail May Engelberg and The Engelberg Foundation; the Sidney E. Frank Foundation;
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; Guggenheim Partners, LLC; the Windgate Charitable
Foundation; the Gap Foundation; the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Inc.; the Henry E. Niles
Foundation, Inc.; and an anonymous donor. The Leadership Committee for Learning Through Art and
A Year with Children 2015 is gratefully acknowledged for its support.
Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim
June 5–September 9, 2015
Featuring nearly one hundred works from the Guggenheim’s contemporary collection, this full-rotunda
exhibition will examine the diverse ways in which artists today engage with storytelling through
installation, painting, photography, sculpture, video, and performance. Opening with examples from the
mid-1990s by Matthew Barney, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Catherine Opie, the core of the
presentation will focus on work made since 2005 that expands and transforms the narrative strategies
established in these foundational works. Moving beyond plot, character, and mise-en-scène, the artists
featured in this exhibition engage the histories and cultural associations embedded in bodies, materials,
and found objects. Through research, appropriation, and careful attention to techniques of display and
process, they create images, objects, and performative situations intended to be read in space as well as
in time. As a means of foregrounding this dynamic, the curators will invite a number of authors and
poets to contribute short reflections on selected works in the exhibition. Presented in addition to
standard exhibition didactics, the resulting polyphony of voices will signal the subjective interpretive
potential that lies within each object on display. Artists in the exhibition will include Paweł Althamer,
Kevin Beasley, Carol Bove, Trisha Donnelly, Simon Fujiwara, Rachel Harrison, Camille Henrot, Rashid
Johnson, Matt Keegan, Mark Manders, Josephine Meckseper, R. H. Quaytman, Alexandre Singh,
Agathe Snow, Danh Vo, and Haegue Yang, among others. The exhibition is organized by Katherine
Brinson, Curator, Contemporary Art; Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David
Stockman Chief Curator; Nat Trotman, Associate Curator; and Joan Young, Director, Curatorial
Affairs; with support from Carmen Hermo, Curatorial Assistant, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
The Leadership Committee for Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim is gratefully
acknowledged for its support, with special thanks to Chair Roberta Amon, as well as Gael Neeson and
Stefan Edlis and Courtney and Scott Taylor. Additional funding for this exhibition is provided by the
New York State Council on the Arts and The Polish Cultural Institute New York.
Doris Salcedo
June 26–October 12, 2015
This major retrospective will survey the searing, deeply poetic work of Doris Salcedo (b. 1958, Bogotá,
Colombia). Over the past three decades, Salcedo has created a body of work that addresses the
traumatic history of modern-day Colombia, as well as wider legacies of suffering stemming from
colonialism, racism, and other forms of social injustice. Originating in lengthy research processes during
which the artist solicits testimonies from the victims of violent oppression, her sculptures and
installations eschew the direct representation of atrocities in favor of open-ended confluences of forms
that are fashioned from evocative materials and intensely laborious techniques. Many of her works
transmute intimate domestic objects into subtly charged vessels freighted with memories and
narratives, paradoxically conjuring that which is tragically absent. The Guggenheim’s presentation of
Doris Salcedo will occupy four levels of the museum’s Annex galleries. It will feature the artist’s most
significant series from the late 1980s to the present, as well as a video documenting her remarkable sitespecific
public projects and architectural interventions. Doris Salcedo is organized by the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago, and co-curated by Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn and Curator
Julie Rodrigues Widholm. The New York presentation is curated by Katherine Brinson, Curator,
Contemporary Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. This exhibition is supported in part by the
Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation. The Leadership Committee for Doris Salcedo is gratefully
acknowledged for its support, with special thanks to Chair Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian, and including
Peter Brandt, The Diane and Bruce Halle Foundation, Jill and Peter Kraus, Cindy and Howard
Rachofsky, Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro, and Jerome and Ellen Stern. Additional funding is
provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Embassy of Colombia.
Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting
October 9, 2015–January 6, 2016
This major retrospective exhibition—the first in the United States in more than 35 years and the most
comprehensive ever mounted—will showcase the pioneering work of Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915–
1995). Exploring the beauty and complexity of Burri’s oeuvre, the exhibition will position the artist as a
central and singular protagonist of post–World War II art. Burri is best known for his series of sacchi
(sacks), works with their angst-ridden surfaces of ripped and patched burlap, seams, and sutures. Far
less familiar to American audiences are his subsequent series, which will be represented in depth at the
Guggenheim: legni (scorched wood reliefs), ferri (welded irons), melted plastics, cretti (induced
craquelure), and cellotex (flayed fiberboards). Burri’s work both demolished and reconfigured the
Western pictorial tradition, while reconceptualizing modernist collage. As an originator of a materialsbased
art, he broke from the conventional paint, canvas, and mark making of American Abstract
Expressionism and European Art Informel. Burri’s unprecedented approaches to manipulating humble
substances—and his abject picture-objects—also profoundly influenced Arte Povera, Neo-Dada, and
Process art. Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting is organized by Emily Braun, Distinguished Professor,
Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Guest Curator, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, with support from Megan Fontanella, Associate Curator, Collections and
Provenance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and with catalogue contributions by Carol Stringari,
Deputy Director and Chief Conservator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Alberto Burri: The
Trauma of Painting is made possible by Lavazza. Support is also provided by The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Leadership Committee for the exhibition. Additional funding is
provided by Mapei Group, E. L. Wiegand Foundation, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, and
the New York State Council on the Arts.
Photo-Poetics: An Anthology
November 20, 2015–February 17, 2016
This group exhibition features more than 70 works by ten artists: Claudia Angelmaier, Erica Baum,
Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, Erin Shirreff, Kathrin Sonntag,
and Sara VanDerBeek. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue will examine an important new
development in contemporary photography, offering an opportunity to define the concerns of a
younger generation of artists and contextualize their work within the history of art and visual culture.
Drawing on the legacies of Conceptualism, these artists pursue a largely studio-based approach to stilllife
photography that centers on the representation of objects, often printed matter such as books,
magazines, and record covers. The result is an image imbued with poetic and evocative personal
significance—a sort of displaced self-portraiture—that resonates with larger cultural and historical
meanings. Driven by a profound engagement with the medium of photography, these artists investigate
the nature, traditions, and magic of photography at a moment characterized by rapid digital
transformation. They attempt to rematerialize the photograph through meticulous printing, using film
and other disappearing photo technologies, and creating artist’s books, installations, and photosculptures.
While they are invested in exploring the processes, supports, and techniques of
photography, they are also deeply interested in how photographic images circulate. Theirs is a sort of
“photo poetics,” an art that self-consciously investigates the laws of photography and the nature of
photographic representation, reproduction, and the photographic object. This exhibition is organized by
Jennifer Blessing, Senior Curator, Photography, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. This exhibition is
supported in part by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. The Leadership Committee for Photo-
Poetics: An Anthology is gratefully acknowledged for its support.
Peter Fischli David Weiss: A Retrospective (working title)
February–May 2016
For more than three decades, Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012) collaborated to
create a unique oeuvre that brilliantly exploits humor, banality, and a keen rethinking of the readymade
to realign our view of the world. Peter Fischli David Weiss: A Retrospective will offer the most thorough
investigation of their joint production to date, revealing the ways they juxtaposed the spectacular and
the ordinary in order to celebrate the sheer triviality of everyday life, while creating an open-ended
interrogation of temporality, visual culture, and the nature of existence itself. The retrospective will
demonstrate the intricate interrelationships among Fischli and Weiss’s seemingly discrete works in
sculpture, photography, installation, and video, each of which they used to confront, examine, and
lampoon the seriousness of high art. In particular it will establish a sustained dialogue between Fischli
and Weiss’s work with the moving image and their sculptural practice, with signature works like Suddenly
This Overview (1981–2012), the hundreds of unfired clay sculptures that pillory established truths and
myths alike, and The Way Things Go (1987), the inane filmic study of causational activity, appearing as
leitmotifs throughout the space. The exhibition will further consider Fischli and Weiss’s extended
meditations on the banality of existence, with virtually every body of work within the oeuvre represented
by key objects from series including The Sausage Photographs (1979), Questions (1981–2002),
Polyurethane Objects (1982–2013), Fever (1983), Grey Sculptures (1983–86), Equilibres (Quiet
Afternoon) (1984–87), Visible World (1986–2001/2014), Rubber Sculptures (1986–2005), Airports (1987–
2006), and Fotografías (2005), among others. To coincide with the exhibition, Public Art Fund will
present How to Work Better (1991), the artists’ text-based monument to labor, as a wall mural in Lower
Manhattan. Initially planned during David Weiss’s lifetime, Peter Fischli David Weiss: A Retrospective is
organized by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, and
Nat Trotman, Associate Curator, in close collaboration with Peter Fischli. The Leadership Committee
for Peter Fischli David Weiss: A Retrospective is gratefully acknowledged for its support, with special
thanks to Glenstone.
Moholy-Nagy: Future Present
June–September 2016
The first comprehensive retrospective of the work of László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) to appear in the
United States in nearly fifty years, this long overdue presentation will reveal a utopian artist who
believed that art could work hand-in-hand with technology for the betterment of humanity. The
exhibition will present an unparalleled opportunity to examine the career of this pioneering painter,
photographer, sculptor, and film maker as well as graphic, exhibition, and stage designer, who was also
an influential teacher at the Bauhaus, a prolific writer, and later the founder of Chicago’s Institute of
Design. One of the most versatile figures of the twentieth-century avant-garde, Moholy-Nagy was an
inveterate experimenter and an ardent believer in the potential of art as a vehicle for social
transformation. Among his radical innovations were experimentation with cameraless photography; the
use of industrial materials in painting and sculpture; research with light, transparency, and movement;
work at the forefront of abstraction; and the fluidity with which he moved between the fine and applied
arts. The exhibition will include more than 250 collages, drawings, ephemera, films, paintings,
photograms, photographs, photomontages, and sculptures, including works from public and private
collections across Europe and the United States, some of which have never before been shown publicly
in the U.S. Also on display will be a large-scale installation entitled Der Raum der Gegenwart (The Room
of Today), a contemporary construction of an exhibition space originally conceived by Moholy-Nagy in
1930. It will include aspects of his exhibition and product design, including a replica of his iconic kinetic
sculpture Light Prop for an Electric Stage (conceived 1922–30). Though never realized during his
lifetime, The Room of Today illustrates Moholy’s belief in the power of images and various means by
which to view them—a highly relevant paradigm in today’s constantly shifting and evolving
technological world. Moholy-Nagy: Future Present is co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After its New
York presentation, the exhibition will travel to Chicago from October 2, 2016–January 3, 2017, and to
Los Angeles from February 12–June 18, 2017. The New York presentation of Moholy-Nagy: Future
Present is made possible by Lavazza. This exhibition is also supported in part by The Hilla von Rebay
Foundation.
Also on view
Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901–1911
Through April 1, 2015
The history of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is intertwined with the work of Vasily
Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) more than any other artist of the
twentieth century. Artist, art advisor, and the museum’s first director Hilla Rebay encouraged founder
Solomon R. Guggenheim to begin collecting Kandinsky’s work in 1929, with more than one hundred
fifty works ultimately entering the museum’s collection. Drawn from the Guggenheim’s holdings,
Kandinsky Before Abstraction, 1901–1911 explores the launch of Kandinsky’s artistic career through an
intimate presentation of early paintings and woodcuts. In 1896, Kandinsky left Moscow for Munich
where he formed associations with the city’s leading avant-garde groups and quickly realized his talent
for working with three classic printmaking techniques (etching, woodcut, and lithography). Such graphic
elements as clearly delineated forms, flattened perspective, and the black-and-white “noncolors” of his
woodcuts pervade the jewel-colored Bavarian landscapes of 1908–09. By 1913, his recognizable and
recurrent motifs—including the horse and rider—were reduced to broad areas of bright, radiant color
that were subsidiary to the expressive qualities of line and color. Kandinsky was finally able to evoke
what he called the “hidden power of the palette” and move away from his pictorial beginnings, thus
embarking on the road to abstraction. This exhibition is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Curator,
Collections and Exhibitions, Solomon R, Guggenheim Museum, and Megan Fontanella, Associate
Curator, Collections and Provenance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
A Long-Awaited Tribute: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian House and Pavilion
On October 22, 1953, the exhibition Sixty Years of Living Architecture: The Work of Frank Lloyd Wright
opened in New York on the site where the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum would be built.
Constructed specifically for the exhibition were two Frank Lloyd Wright–designed buildings: a
temporary pavilion made of glass, fiberboard, and pipe columns, and a 1,700-square-foot, fully furnished
two-bedroom Usonian exhibition house representing Wright’s organic solution for modest, middle-class
dwellings. This presentation, on view in the Sackler Center for Arts Education, pays homage to these
two structures, which, as Wright himself noted, represented a long-awaited tribute as the first Wright
buildings to be erected in New York City. This exhibition is organized by Francine Snyder, Director of
Library and Archives, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
The Thannhauser Collection
Bequeathed to the museum by art dealer and collector Justin K. Thannhauser, the Thannhauser
Collection includes a selection of canvases, works on paper, and sculpture that represents the earliest
works in the museum’s collection. The Thannhauser holdings include significant works by Paul Cézanne,
Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and
Vincent van Gogh. Thannhauser’s commitment to supporting the early careers of such artists as Vasily
Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Franz Marc, and to educating the public about modern art, paralleled the
vision of the Guggenheim Foundation’s originator, Solomon R. Guggenheim. Among the works
Thannhauser gave are such incomparable masterpieces as Van Gogh’s Mountains at Saint-Rémy
(Montagnes à Saint-Rémy, July 1889), Manet’s Before the Mirror (Devant la glace, 1876), and close to
thirty paintings and drawings by Picasso, including his seminal works Le Moulin de la Galette (autumn
1900) and Woman Ironing (La Repasseuse, spring 1904).
Global exhibitions
Seeing Through Light: Selections from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Collection
Manarat Al Saadiyat Cultural District, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Through March 26, 2015
Seeing Through Light: Selections from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Collection introduces the curatorial
vision of the future museum through a theme-based collection presentation. This pre-opening
exhibition features artworks by 19 international artists from the 1960s to today, all of whom explore the
theme of light as a primary aesthetic principle in art. The exhibition unfolds across five sections that
examine various expressions of light: Perceptual, Reflected, Transcendent, Activated, and Celestial.
While it begins chronologically in the 1960s (which aligns with the start date for the Guggenheim Abu
Dhabi collection), Seeing Through Light quickly blends time and mixes established and mid-career
artists of multiple nationalities, assembling a diversity of media within each section. From video,
painting, and sculpture to immersive environments that visitors can move around in and even
through, one is able to experience the spatial, sensory, and perceptual dimensions of light. Among the
artists included are Angela Bulloch, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Robert Irwin, Y.Z. Kami, Bharti
Kher, Rachid Koraïchi, Yayoi Kusama, Otto Piene, and Doug Wheeler. With its poetic references to the
start of a new era, Seeing Through Light illuminates the creative vision of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi,
offers the first glimpse of what is to come, and represents a significant milestone in the evolution of the
new museum. Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority is gratefully acknowledged for their support.
Guggenheim Helsinki Now
Kunsthalle Helsinki, Nervanderinkatu 3, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
April 25–May 16, 2015
The Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition is the first open, international architectural competition
to be organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. This initiative reflects the Guggenheim’s
long history of engagement with architecture and design and its belief that outstanding original design
can speak across cultures, refreshing and enlivening the urban environment. From April 25 to May 16,
2015, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation will present the free, public exhibition Guggenheim
Helsinki Now at the Kunsthalle Helsinki in Finland. Augmented by a series of talks, events, and
performances designed to engage a range of age groups, the exhibition will reveal to the public for the
first time the final designs submitted by the six finalist teams in the Guggenheim Helsinki Design
Competition, as well as fifteen designs awarded honorable mentions by the jury. Visitors to the
exhibition also will be invited to explore interactive installations that present analyses and interpretations
of the data compiled from all 1,715 submissions to the competition. Guggenheim Helsinki Now is curated
by Troy Conrad Therrien, Curator for Architecture and Digital Initiatives, with Ashley Mendelsohn,
Project Assistant, Architecture and Digital Initiatives, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Admission: Adults $25, students/seniors (65+) $18, members and children under 12 free. Available with
admission or by download to personal devices, the Guggenheim’s free app offers an enhanced visitor
experience. The app features content on special exhibitions, access to more than 1,600 works in the
Guggenheim’s permanent collection, and information about the museum’s landmark building. Verbal
imaging guides for select exhibitions are also included for visitors who are blind or have low vision. The
Guggenheim app is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Museum Hours: Sun–Wed, 10 am–5:45 pm; Fri, 10 am–5:45 pm; Sat, 10 am–7:45 pm; closed Thurs.
On Saturdays, beginning at 5:45 pm, the museum hosts Pay What You Wish. For general information,
call 212 423 3500 or visit the museum online at: guggenheim.org
guggenheim.org/social