Guggenheim Museum Schedule of #Exhibitions Through Early #2016

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