Eliana Willis

London’s museums and galleries are firing on all cylinders as Frieze Week approaches. There is simply too much to see in just a few days, so we’ve a narrowed down the city’s offerings to a handful of must-see shows that offer a little bit of everything: From Impressionist masterpieces to A.I.-generated hymns, and Brazilian modernist sculpture to 21st-century robots.
Lauren Halsey’s “Emajendat” and Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s “The Call” at Serpentine Gallery
Lauren Halsey, land of the sunshine wherever we go II (detail) (2021). Courtesy Lauren Halsey.
Lauren Halsey has quickly become known for her work that investigates connections between communities and architecture, especially through a visual vernacular that evokes South Central Los Angeles, where her family has lived for generations, as well as iconography from the African diaspora and queer icons. The show at Serpentine’s South gallery, opening October 10, comes hot on the heels of the 37-year-old artist’s Met roof commission last year and her canal-side installation at this year’s Venice Biennale. It is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.K. and transforms the gallery into a “funk garden,” drawing inspiration from both funk music and the gallery’s location in Kensington Gardens. Among the highlights is a prismatic floor and walls made from CDs provide, her signature “funkmounds”—cavernous plaster architectural structures—and a live water fountain. Additionally, Halsey will debut her first moving image work.
Just a five-minute walk through the park and over the bridge at Serpentine’s North gallery is Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s stunning new show, “The Call,” which is also worth seeing—or hearing. In keeping with Halsey’s theme of musical inspiration, although leveraging an entirely different genre, Herndon and Dryhurst have employed a suite of A.I. models trained on a dataset of new recordings of choral singers from around the U.K. to create a technological temple.
—Margaret Carrigan
“Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” at the National Gallery and “Monet and London” at the Courtauld Gallery
Installation view of “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” at the National Gallery in London. Photo: © The National Gallery, London.
In the last few weeks, Impressionism has taken over London, with two blockbuster shows dedicated to Van Gogh and Monet respectively. Among the most critically acclaimed institutional offerings in the U.K. capital this year are “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers,” on view at the National Gallery, and “Monet and London: Views of the Thames” at the Courtauld, both until January 19, 2025. Each exhibition puts a new spin on well known and a beloved artist. Moreover, given the sheer volume of important loaned works from around the world, both shows are considered once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to see so many works by these peerless artists.
In the case of Van Gogh, some of French artist’s most iconic works are joined by sensitive portraits of friends and a studies of his favorite spaces, from gardens to his own bedroom, offering a glimpse into how he reimagined everyday surroundings as part of his unique artistic universe. Just a ten-minute stroll down the Strand, the Courtauld’s show reveals why Monet fell in love with London: Not for its majestic monuments but for its air pollution, which led to obsessive paintings of its ever-changing atmospheric conditions.
—Jo Lawson-Tancred
Geumhyung Jeong’s “Under Construction” at ICA London
Geumhyung Jeong, “Under Construction,” ICA London installation, 2024. Photo: Rob Harris. Courtesy of ICA.
Geumhyung Jeong is full of surprises. Born in Seoul in 1980, the innovative artist tactfully blends choreography with objects and technology in her practice. She has wowed audiences around the globe, from a gallery show in Berlin to a Kunsthalle performance in Basel, and even fashion fans on the Miu Miu runway. This time, Jeong brings an eerie installation comprised of plastic human skeleton models and self-made robots to London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) for her solo show “Under Construction.” The exhibition features newly commissioned works, including an installation of video work and sculptures.
Don’t be scared by the eerie mechanical body parts scattered on the gallery floor—they will make sense if you get a chance to experience Jeong’s performance. She often uses her body like painters use their brushes, charting the uncanny relationship between humanity and machines through her movements with hardware tools and mannequin parts. The artist will give two performances during the week of Frieze, on October 8 and 9, and again in November before the show concludes on December 15. Tickets are required so act fast.
—Vivienne Chow
“Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit” at Tate Modern
Mike Kelley, detail of Ahh…Youth! (1991). Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts © Mike Kelley Foundation for theArts. All Rights Reserved/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2024.
In his expansive and explosive installations, Mike Kelley had a unique ability to marry pop culture with deep philosophy, and childlike wonder with adulthood anxieties. Tate Modern’s recently opened survey marks the first major exhibition dedicated to the American artist and features everything from drawings and collages to videos and multimedia installations that constitute Kelley’s “dark pop art” oeuvre. What the exhibition does well—and perhaps what makes it timely—is underscore the artist’s investigation of social belief systems, including conspiracy theories, and how personal memory may shape how we understand the world around us, for better or worse.
Drawing from his working-class upbringing in the post-industrial city of Detroit, Michigan, in the 1970s and ’80s, Kelley mined his own memories for inspiration. He grappled with depression until death in 2012 in Los Angeles, and his fraught relationship with not only his past but his ability to experience joy and a safety in the present infuses his work. His tattered textile-and-stuffed-animal sculptures—such as More Love Hours than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin (1987), on view at Tate—are some of his most iconic works, as are those referencing Superman, a totemic figure that appears frequently throughout his work to represent not a hero, but someone utterly alone who could never go home.
—Margaret Carrigan
“Lygia Clark: The I and the You” and Sonia Boyce’s “An Awkward Relation” at Whitechapel Gallery
Installation view of “Lygia Clark: The I and the You” at Whitechapel Gallery in London. Photo: Above Ground Studio.
Brazilian modernism has been having a moment this year, with many important names put on the global stage by Brazilian curator Adriano Pedrosa in his “Foreigners Everywhere” exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale. A notable absence was Lygia Clark, but unlike many of her peers who were unfairly overlooked, Clark has been a huge international name for many decades with a notable retrospective of her work was staged at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968. Her practice is also notable for its early experimentation with more participatory modes of experiencing art that explored its therapeutic potential.
Her first major U.K. institutional show is therefore much belated in 2024. This Whitechapel Gallery show traces Clark’s enormous influence on the Latin American art scene as co-founder of the non-concrete art movement, which pushed for a more poetic and expressive approach to art making. The exhibition is put in dialog with a number of pivotal works by esteemed British artist Sonia Boyce, whose presentation at the 2022 Venice Biennale was given the Golden Lion award for best national pavilion. Boyce said she was introduced to Clark’s work in the 1990s and felt a strong connection with the Brazilian artist’s practice. “An Awkward Relation” brings together a number of rarely seen works to explore themes of interaction, participation, and improvisation, reflecting some of the radical approaches that Clark pioneered.
—Jo Lawson-Tancred More

As the art world is getting ready for the back-to-back two-week frenzy of Frieze London and Art Basel Paris, there’s an equally important event in Switzerland. Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel has recently opened a major exhibition of Henri Matisse. Billed as the first retrospective of the French master in Switzerland and the German-speaking world in nearly two decades, unveiling such a blockbuster show ahead of Europe’s fair season seem to serve as a reminder of the importance of this tranquil Swiss town, which was the birthplace of one of the world’s most powerful art fairs today.
Titled “Invitation to the Voyage,” the show curated by Raphaël Bouvier, senior curator at Fondation Beyeler, features more than 70 works including those from the collection of the Swiss museum as well as those on loan from some of the world’s most esteemed museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and an international array of private collections. The works on display span from 1900 to the 1950s, tracing the French artist’s career development as he became one of modern art’s most influential figures.
Henri Matisse, Luxe, calme et volupté (1904). Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris. © Succession H. Matisse / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d‘Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski.
The exhibition’s title was drawn from the poem of the same name by French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). The themes of serenity, luxury, and pleasure explored in the poem are often said to permeate Matisse’s oeuvre, as illustrated by this repeated verse, “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté.” (“There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.”)  This also serves as the most obvious reference in his 1904 painting Luxe, Calme et Volupté, on display in this show, demonstrated by its rich color palette as well as the depiction of light and landscapes in the mood of pleasure.
Henri Matisse, La fenêtre ouverte, Collioure (The Open Window) (1905). © Succession H. Matisse / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich Photo: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
This serves as a conceptual springboard for the exhibition, which delves into the artist’s inner vision and artistic evolution through works fused with the artist’s fascination with light and perspectives of the external world spanning from different eras. The selection also reflects Matisse’s expansive journeys over the course of time. His travels—from his native northern France to the Mediterranean South, through Italy, Spain, North Africa, and then the United States and the South Pacific— played a pivotal role in his art. Those experiences reflect the artist’s quest for literal new horizons, and for a constant reinvention of his personal artistic language. From his early Fauvist works to late paper cut-outs, Matisse absorbed different cultures, traditions, and landscapes that are evident in his roving styles. An open window is a recurring motif in the works on display, which invite viewers to contemplate the oscillation between the interior and the exterior, and the conflicting desire to be both here and afar.
Henri Matisse, Intérieur, bocal de poissons rouges (Interior with a Goldfish Bowl) (1914). © Succession H. Matisse / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Philippe Migeatigeat.
The journey begins with Matisse’s early works around the turn of the 20th century. Paintings including La Desserte (The Dinner Table) (1896/1897), Luxe, calme et volupté (1904), and La fenêtre ouverte (The Open Window, Collioure) (1905) chart the artist’s transition from traditional figuration to Fauvism with an expressive approach to colors, simplification of forms, and distinctive brushstrokes.
Henri Matisse, Figure décorative sur fond ornemental (Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground) (1925/26). © Succession H. Matisse / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Philippe Migeat.
These influences lingered in the subsequent decades as Matisse explored and refined his artistic language further, particularly the pictorial composition, depiction of object and light in works such as Poissons rouges et sculpture (Goldfish and Sculpture) (1912) and Intérior, Bocal de Poissons Rouges (Interior with a Goldfish Bowl) (1914). There is a sense of heightened sensuality in his Nice period paintings of the 1920s, as in Figure décorative sur fond ornemental (Decorative Figure on an Ornamental Ground) (1925/1926), which displays his mastery of light and texture.
Henri Matisse, Grand nu couché (Nu rose) [Large Reclining Nude (The Pink Nude)] (1935). © Succession H. Matisse / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: Mitro Hood, courtesy of the Baltimore Museum of Art.Lines and forms are further simplified in subsequent works that could be seen as the foundation for his famed cut-outs from the 1940s and 1950s. Works such as Nu bleu I (Blue Nude I) (1952) are characterized by vibrant colors, bold shapes, and a simplicity that evokes joyous dynamism.
Henri Matisse, Nu bleu I (Blue Nude I) (1952). Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection. © Succession H. Matisse / 2024, ProLitteris, Zurich. Photo: Robert Bayer.
The exhibition also focuses on Matisse’s creative process, which is explored in a multimedia space showcasing historical photographs of his travels in animated wall panels. The presentation also offers a glimpse into the artist’s studios, intomaye spaces held closest to the artist, and perhaps a physical manifestation of his inner world. This exhibition is one important rendezvous for fans and art lovers alike.
“Matisse—Invitation to the Voyage” runs through January 26, 2025, at Fondation Beyeler. More

Around 1224 C.E., while recovering from an illness, St. Francis of Assisi penned one of the most celebrated hymns in the Christian faith. In “Canticle of the Creatures,” the founder of the Franciscan Order gave praise to all of god’s creation in a lyrical form that would go on to inspire composers Franz Liszt and Howard Blake, who wrote settings for it, and poet Robert Lax who wrote a tribute to it. Today, the famed hymn represents one of the oldest works of the Italian literary canon with a known author.
Some eight centuries after St. Francis composed “Creatures,” the manuscript of the beloved canticle is making its first appearance in Rome at the exhibition “Laudato Sie! Nature and Science. The Cultural Legacy of Brother Francis.” Hosted by the Museum of Rome, the show centers on the canticle, which will be on view alongside more than 90 other books and manuscripts from the Sacred Convent’s Ancient Collection of the Municipal Library of Assisi, located in the Umbrian city where Francis was born.
Giovanni Paolo Gallucci – Theatrum mundi et temporis Venice 1588. Photo: Museo di Roma.
“Centuries later and in a profoundly changed cultural context, it is still possible to draw lessons from the experience of Francis and his followers, which indeed resonates in a particularly significant way in an era in which the issues of the environment and sustainability have forcefully returned to the center of public debate,” said the city’s mayor Roberto Gualtieri in a statement. “Recovering that sense of empathic admiration for a world that we too often take for granted is now more necessary than ever, and in this the exhibition represents an opportunity from which we hope each of us can find fertile inspiration.”
One of the most important saints in the Roman Catholic faith and indeed Christianity in general, St. Francis was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone around 1181 C.E. Stories of his life follow a familiar hagiographic format. Born into a rich family, he abandoned his inherited wealth and power after experiencing a spiritual awakening and began life anew as a beggar, friar, and, following his canonization by Pope Gregory IX in 1228, saint.
Giotto di Bondone, Saint Francis of Assisi (San Francesco) preaching to the birds, detail of the predella of St Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata. Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images.
Like countless other Christian icons, Francis welcomed poverty and suffering— qualities that not just allowed him to directly identify with the persecuted and downtrodden figure of Christ, but also compelled him to treat others with kindness and respect, uncorrupted by the influence of material possessions. His love-centered interpretation of Christianity sharply contrasted with the dogmatism of the church, foreshadowing everything from the Protestant Reformation to the theological writings of Russian author Leo Tolstoy.
Manuscript showing St. Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Creatures.” Photo: Museo di Roma.
This way of thinking is prominently displayed in St. Francis’ hymn “Canticle of the Creatures,” which was written in his native Umbrian dialect before being translated into other languages such as Latin. The hymn reiterates values its author demonstrated through his saintly lifestyle, notably his appreciation for all living and non-living things. “Praised be You, my Lord,” one of its verses reads, “with all Your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, Who is the day and through whom You give us light.”
Fittingly, perhaps, the hymn was sung to Francis as he lay on his deathbed.
The Franciscans and Encyclopedic Knowledge – Isador of Seville Etymologiarum opus Venice 1483. Photo: Museo di Roma.
Those visiting  “Laudato Sie!” will be able to admire the oldest known copy of “Canticle of the Creatures,” as well as an immersive space that brings to life the hymn’s religious sentiment and vision of nature. Another immersive experience, which bookends the exhibition, puts viewers in touch with more projections of flora and fauna, described by the museum as “an ‘integral’ vision of the world.”
In between those rooms, the show offers views of relics including the Universal Sacred-Profane Library, an incomplete encyclopedia from the early 18th century compiled by the Franciscan friar Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, and “De Sphaera mundi” or “On the Sphere of the World,” a treatise on pre-Copernican astronomy written by the monk Johannes de Sacrobosco around 1230 C.E.
“Laudato Sie! Nature and Science. The Cultural Legacy of Brother Francis” is on view at the Museum of Rome, Piazza San Pantaleo, 10, Piazza Navona, 2, Rome More

Pablo Picasso’s first permanent address in Paris was a Montmartre squat. Nicknamed the Washhouse Boat because the tenement building swayed and groaned in foul weather, it was inhabited by a rabble of poor artists, and its surroundings cast Picasso among society’s downtrodden. This was the time of Picasso’s “Blue Period,” defined by its forlorn monochromatic paintings, but there’s an etching that captures the spirit equally well.
A Frugal Meal (1904) makes a mockery of the Impressionist’s bountiful café, its couple is gaunt and melancholy, their demeanor of resignation offered with such empathy that one infers the artist drew on personal experience. Made with a salvaged zinc plate, it was Picasso’s first proper attempt at printmaking, a medium that would shadow and sometimes inform his broader practice for the next seven decades.
Pablo Picasso, The frugal meal (1904). © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024.
Picasso would go onto produce nearly 2,500 prints across the course of his career. This may come as a surprise to those more familiar with his paintings and sculptures, though perhaps it shouldn’t, given the artist’s omnivorous and prolific habits. An expansive exhibition at the British Museum is arriving to fill in any such blanks in the public’s imagination. Simply named “Picasso: Printmaker,” it gathers around 100 etchings, lithographs, aquatints, and linocuts that evidence how Picasso explored the medium of print despite limited formal training.
Pablo Picasso, Leaping bulls (1950). © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024.
The show is the culmination of two decades of targeted and attritional collecting and offers the British Museum as an institution keen to go beyond its reputation for staging narrative exhibitions around historic artifacts. When the museum acquired 19 largely abstract prints in 2016, it declared that it had filled “the last important gap” in Picasso’s oeuvre of prints. In the run up to the exhibition, the museum’s director, Nicholas Cullinan, lays claim to showing Picasso’s “UK’s most extensive collection of prints”. With well over 500 prints, this hardly seems like hyperbole.
Pablo Picasso, Faun uncovering a woman(1936). © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024.
Picasso’s explorations of print were intense sporadic affairs, and his two most celebrated episodes are on full display here, full of lust and curves and trickery. The first belongs to his Vollard Suite, named for the art dealer who commissioned 100 Neoclassical etchings from the Spaniard in 1930 (though it took him seven years to complete). Though not drawn from a single source, they allude not only to classical mythology, but art history’s earlier masters of print. Faun Uncovering a Woman (1936), for instance, plays with Rembrandt’s depiction of Jupiter and Antiope loosening lines and veering into abstraction.
Pablo Picasso, Picasso, his work and his audience (1968) © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024.
The second of Picasso’s vaunted forays into printmaking is his “347 Suite,” named for the number prints he executed in a seven-month blitz in 1968. The British Museum boasts the full set, but given the works riff and repeat—he would sometimes make up to eight prints per day—only 28 are on display. They are erotic and fantastical works filled with beasts, breasts, and bands of blackness. In its best-known work, Picasso, His Work and His Audience (1968), the octogenarian quite bluntly confronts himself and his viewer.
Pablo Picasso, Pike II 1959 © Succession Picasso, DACS, London 2024.
“[Picasso’s prints] demonstrated a deep understanding of the medium and eagerness to experiment and innovate,” said Catherine Daunt, the curator of modern and contemporary prints. “Printmaking became, for Picasso, the art form through which he could tell stories and follow a thought or idea, few artists contributed more to the medium in the 20th century.”
“Picasso: Printmaker” runs from November 7 to March 30, 2025. More

The Albertina Museum in Vienna has opened a major retrospective of Marc Chagall (1887–1985), commemorating 40 years since the artist’s death. Running until February 9, 2025, the show brings together over 100 works made over the course of his life. Born in the shtetl of Vitebsk, Chagall’s childhood memories, themes of nostalgia, longing, and Jewish identity recur throughout his oeuvre.
While Chagall’s works are often filled with harmonious colors, from celestial blues to vibrant reds, the paintings seem joyous and ethereal at first glance, but there are also many darker themes that permeate the work. Displacement was a central theme to his life and work: having lived through pogroms, two world wars, and the persecution of Jews during the Nazi regime, Chagall was forced into exile multiple times. Yet, even in exile, he never lost his connection to his homeland and memories of Vitebsk, a small town in what is now Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. He migrated from Russia to Paris to study at the Ecole de Paris, before moving to New York, and eventually back to France.
Marc Chagall, Rabbi in Black and White (The Praying Jew) (1914-22). Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Galleria Internazionale d′Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro © Bildrecht, Vienna 2024.
The exhibition at the Albertina allows visitors to experience Chagall’s use of symbolism. His paintings are filled with floating lovers, violin-playing rabbis, roosters, cows, headless figures and biblical motifs, often with a heightened perspective, drawing the viewer’s into the visually stimulating scenes. These recurring motifs, often fantastical, mirror his own life experiences, blending happiness and joy with suffering, displacement and a deep connection to his Jewish heritage. He was deeply inspired by the Bible, considering it “the greatest source of poetry of all time.” He produced many artworks based on Biblical stories, including a famous series of Bible illustrations and stained glass windows for churches, synagogues, windows for the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, the UN building in New York, and the Notre Dame Cathedral in Reims, France.
Marc Chagall, Birthday [detail] (1923). AOKI Holdings© Bildrecht, Vienna 2024 / Photo: AOKI Holdings.One stand-out work in the exhibition is titled The Birthday (1915), depicting Chagall and his wife Bella Rosenfeld in a loving embrace, defying gravity and floating in the air. The dreamlike quality of the figures floating above the ground symbolises their love and the mysteriousness of human emotion. The Birthday exemplifies Chagall’s ability to use color, composition and form to evoke the magical with the mundane. His wife was often his muse, reappearing in paintings throughout the retrospective. Her death in 1944 had a significant impact on him. Another notable work is titled The Lovers (1913-14), an earlier and larger version of his Les Amoureux (1928) painting, that sold at Christies New York for a record $28.5 million in 2017.
Marc Chagall, The Blue Circus (1950–1952). Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle, dation en 1988, en dépôt au Musée national Marc Chagall, Nice © Bildrecht, Vienna 2024.
The Albertina’s retrospective celebrates Chagall’s artistic achievements and reflects his impact on modern art. Refusing to conform to the avant-garde movements of his time, Chagall developed a deeply personal style that was rooted in his cultural and spiritual background. His contemporaries spanned different movements—from Symbolism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and the broader avant-garde. He developed his style in conversation with but often apart from, many artists including Picasso, Modigliani and Kandinsky. His ability to unite opposites—joy and sorrow, memory and imagination—gave his work a quality that continues to inspire generations of artists, musicians, writers and poets.
Marc Chagall, To Russia, Asses and Others (1911). Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne– Centre de création industrielle, don de l’artiste en 1953. © Bildrecht, Vienna 2024.
As the final exhibition under Klaus Albrecht Schröder’s leadership, the Chagall retrospective closes an important chapter for the Albertina Museum. In collaboration with the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, the exhibition offers a comprehensive retrospective on Chagall’s artistic legacy.
Marc Chagall, The Great Circus (1970). The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna – The Batliner Collection. © Bildrecht, Vienna 2024.
Visitors will leave with a deeply comprehensive understanding of his work and a renewed appreciation for how he captured the complexities of human life and emotion—joy, sorrow, love, and loss—through a visual language that continues to move many audiences across the world. More

What does it take to build a museum? Whose labor and livelihood bring these high-minded visions to life?
Right now, Magazzino Italian Art is giving visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the process—and people—who made post-war and contemporary Italian art institution a reality.
Curated by Paola Mura, “Building Magazzino 2014–2024” presents 50 large-scale photographs by Italian-born, New York-based photographer Marco Anelli (on view through through October 28). The museum commissioned Anelli to chronicle the museum’s transformation from a conceptual vision to its current form.
“My frequent presence at the site is crucial not to miss any important progress,” said Anelli. “To carry out such long projects, I follow the flow and rhythm of the works.”
Robert Onick Pavilion, Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, NY. Photo by Marco Anelli. Courtesy Magazzino Italian Art
Located in Cold Spring, New York, about an hour north of New York City, the museum opened to the public in 2017 with its main building, a 20,000-square-foot space by Spanish architect Miguel Quismondo, who retrofitted an existing structure previously used as a milk pasteurization facility. The museum’s second pavilion was completed in 2023, adding 13,000 feet to the institution, including exhibition and auditorium spaces and a cafe and gift shop.
With his camera, Anelli captured these transformations from planning to the 2015 groundbreaking through to its current state. “The first phase is often the most chaotic,” said Anelli of the project. “The excavation has just started, soil and mud are all over the place, which makes the shooting challenging at times. After that initial phase, the foundation is built, and from an underground level made of rubbles, things slowly move to a more tidy view that starts to show the form of the future building.”
But the power of his photography lies beyond the scenic grounds and modernist structures, in his captivating portraits of the construction workers and craftspeople who came to work and, hour by hour, day by day, built Magazzino from the ground up. For the photographer, the presence of different workers forms a timeline.
“The evolution of a building site is noticeable even by looking at the workers that are present and active at the building site over the different phases of the works,” said Anelli. “Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters and so on are the human side of the construction process and one of the crucial elements that tells its story.”
To document the workers, Anelli would discreetly ask the workers for a few minutes of their time, being sure not to cause too much disruption to the work and tasks that can be complex and even dangerous.
Marco Anelli, Edgar, Masonry, from “Building Magazzino.”
“They are highly skilled and committed to their job and aren’t used to the presence of a photographer asking for pictures,” said Anell “They would often joke after the shoot, pretending to be movie stars thus creating a spirit of camaraderie among them.”
The photographer would give the workers some time to get used to the camera. “In photography though, smiling may be a sort of mask. So I let them smile, move, joke, and laugh for a few minutes until they relaxed and started to show their true personality. At that point they would often stop smiling and take intense and genuine expressions,” he said. “That was the best moment to take their portrait.”
The portraits bear the same natural grace as Anelli’s documentation of the building’s construction. For Anelli, the workers, the structure, and the landscape are all part of a single storyline. The Magazzino project is the latest in Anelli’s practice of documenting major museum moments.
Perhaps most famously, in 2010, Anelli was on-site capturing portraits of 1,545 participants in Marina Abramović’s now iconic performance “The Artist is Present” at MoMA. He also documented the construction of the new Whitney Museum of American Art in his 2015 A Simple Story.
For Anelli, the ground-up creation of an institution is an ever-fruitful place of inspiration. “Shooting a building site is for me one of the most interesting and surprising types of photo projects I can carry out,” he said “What was once just a field, is today a museum that through this show tells the phases of its birth and its evolution through the faces and stories of the protagonists.” More