The Guggenheim Museum presents Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility, a major exhibition predicated on a duality: works of art that present the figure, yet obscure it in some way, thus existing at the “edge of visibility.” The exhibition asserts that these experimentations in figuration across media—painting, photography, drawing, prints, sculpture, video, and installation—articulate pressing questions around what it means to be seen, not seen, or erased in society. On view from October 20, 2023, through April 7, 2024, the exhibition features 28 artists and fills all six ramps of the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda.
On September 1st, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s, the first North American museum exhibition dedicated to Korean Experimental art (silheom misul) and its artists, whose radical approach to materials and process produced some of the most significant avant-garde practices of the twentieth century.
In celebration of Earth Day, the museum will host The World Around’s annual summit and its first Young Climate Prize, recognizing twenty-five extraordinary minds from diverse backgrounds under the age of twenty-five who are working to combat climate change. These climate pioneers will take part in a mentorship program and design academy, ultimately presenting their projects at the museum. Three winners will be celebrated during the summit, held on April 22.
The Guggenheim and The World Around will also co-host Late Shift x The Young Climate Prize, a ticketed public program on Friday, April 21. The evening will highlight the projects by the Young Climate Prize finalists, and guests will have the opportunity to view short films about the projects, listen to talks between design champions, participate in sustainable artmaking activities, embark on self-guided tours of the museum’s iconic architecture and exhibitions, and connect with the finalists as well as other guests.
April 8, 2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and thus the year will represent a celebration of his work and his artistic legacy in France, Spain and internationally. For this occasion, the French and Spanish governments have organized a large-scale transnational event through a bi-national commission, bringing together the cultural and diplomatic administrations of both countries.
Supported by renowned cultural institutions in Europe and the United States, the program of the Picasso Celebration 1973-2023 will be structured around some fifty exhibitions and events that, as a whole, trace a historiographical approach to Picasso’s work.
In Europe and the United States, the exhibitions and associated programs of the Picasso Celebration 1973-2023 will therefore highlight the artist’s influence throughout the 20th century and his continued reference for artists of the 21st century through a variety of approaches. 42 exhibitions are currently planned. 16 in Spain; 12 in France; 2 in Germany; 2 in Switzerland; 1 in Monaco; 1 in romania; 1 in Belgium, and we will highlight below the 7 exhibitions scheduled for here in the USA.
Below, we list where the celebratory events will be held in the New York area from May into January, 2024. As we get closer to the dates for each event, more information will be provided.
The Guggenheim Museum will present Young Picasso in Paris, an intimate exhibition comprising a total of ten paintings and works on paper executed during Pablo Picasso’s introduction to the French capital. Created over the course of one pivotal year, these works exemplify a period of stylistic experimentation and show his burgeoning mastery of character study. Picasso (b. 1881, Málaga, Spain; d. 1973, Mougins, France) arrived in Paris from Barcelona in autumn 1900, during the final weeks of the Universal Exhibition that included his own art in the Spanish pavilion. The ville lumière, or “city of lights,” captivated, and ultimately transformed, the nineteen-year-old Spaniard. He absorbed everything Paris had to offer over his initial two-month stay and during his return the following May through the end of 1901. Picasso patronized not only the art galleries, but also the bohemian cafés, raucous nightclubs, and sensational dance halls in the hilltop neighborhood of Montmartre. These sites of social gathering and the various types of people who frequented them quickly became a primary source of inspiration.
A major retrospective devoted to the work of Gego, or Gertrud Goldschmidt (b. 1912, Hamburg; d. 1994, Caracas), will be presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from March 31, 2023, through September 10, 2023, offering a fully integrated view of the influential German-Venezuelan artist and her distinctive approach to the language of abstraction. Across five ramps of the museum’s rotunda, Gego: Measuring Infinity will feature approximately 200 artworks from the early 1950s through the early 1990s, including sculptures, drawings, prints, textiles, and artist’s books.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present a solo exhibition of Sarah Sze (b. 1969, Boston) featuring a series of site-specific installations by the acclaimed New York–based artist. Sarah Sze: Timelapse will unravel a trail of discovery through multiple spaces of the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building, from the exterior of the museum to the sixth level of the rotunda and the adjacent tower level gallery. The exhibition will explore Sze’s ongoing reflection on how our experience of time and place is continuously reshaped in relationship to the constant stream of objects, images, and information in today’s digitally and materially saturated world.
Influential and experimental artist Eva Hesse (b. 1936, Hamburg, Germany; d. 1970, New York) sought to make objects that were neither painting nor sculpture, but a hybrid that was all her own. This exhibition centers around Expanded Expansion (1969), a monumental piece from the Guggenheim collection publicly displayed for the first time in 35 years, while also offering a glimpse into the artist’s studio practice and approach to art-making.
The Guggenheim turns 61 today, so here’s a gift for New York, from New York—“Mind’s Eye: A Sensory Guide to the Guggenheim New York,” a new audio experience designed for blind and low-vision communities, and illuminating for all. Narrated by a diverse cast of quintessential New York voices, including both regular and renowned city dwellers—among them actors Bobby Cannavale and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Bishop Chantel R. Wright—the “Mind’s Eye” guide transports listeners to New York City, bringing them from bustling Fifth Avenue into the uplifting space within the museum.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, ‘Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983, NYC
Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: The Untold Story is one of several exhibitions in New York City of late, focusing on the artists work, with this exhibit veering stunningly close to our current political climate, as Basquiat painted a bitterly similar story of race and relations between police and community. The Guggenheim chose to explore Basquiat’s role of cultural activism in the early 1980s, beginning with his painting, ‘The Death of Michael Stewart (1983), informally known as ‘Defacement.‘
