Eliana Willis

Over the weekend, January 27 and 28, Casa Batlló in Barcelona was transformed with light, color, and motion. About 95,000 visitors turned up to watch the kinetic display, in which artist Sofia Crespo’s artificial intelligence-assisted scenes and textures were projected onto the Antoni Gaudí-designed monument. 
The Lisbon-based Crespo, best known for her use of technology to explore biological structures, is the Casa Batlló’s second artist-in-residence, a role created as part of its Heritage of Tomorrow program. Just as Refik Anadol before her, Crespo was invited to create new works referencing Gaudí’s design; the first of these, titled Structures of Being, was unveiled at the live projection mapping event (other installations from Crespo’s residency are forthcoming).
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Across 12 showings, Crespo’s art danced over the facade of the building. Her luminously hued organic forms—florals, coral reefs, butterflies, and other natural phenomena—rippled and morphed in tandem with music by British composer Robert M. Thomas. The images also played off Gaudi’s surreal architecture, itself inspired by the shapes of the sea and marine life. 
“The fact that he’s using architecture as a way of connecting with the natural world,” said Crespo about the Catalan designer in a video accompanying the event. “In a way, I see a big parallel with what I’m doing.” 
Rendering of Structures of Being by Sofia Crespo. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The work was created by Crespo in partnership with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, which provided the artist with data on the behavior of marine currents. With this, Crespo used A.I. to generate her projection, emphasizing the “active effort of creating datasets… of training… of directing where that output goes,” she said. Thomas’s score, too, was an algorithmically generated piece that was performed by local performers.  
“We wanted to have this sound that illustrates Gaudí’s transitions,” Crespo explained. “There’s a big part of Gaudí’s work that is largely alive because it’s constantly being interpreted by people and literally being built right now. We wanted to tell that story.” 
See more images from the event below. 
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
Sofia Crespo, Structures of Being (2024) at Casa Batlló. Photo: Claudia Maurino.
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For homosexuals and other queer folks, dry January can make the start of the year feel like staring into a gaping maw. Luckily, there is a slew of invigorating New York art shows catering to a broad spectrum of tastes and moods. Thank the goddess! From disrobed rebels to poetic and somber parables, the LGBTQ art squad really threw down. What links all of these exhibitions is a shared element of storytelling and myth-making. They’re all compelling in their own way—and each propose a disparate desire.
Karlheinz Weinberger, “Subsequent Icons,” at Situations Henry Street
Karlheinz Weinberger, Portrait, (c. mid 1960s). Courtesy of Situations Gallery and the Karlheinz Weinberger Foundation 
The Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger is best known for his 1950s and 1960s images of the “Halbstark” subculture of beatniks, motorcycle gangs, and the big-haired ladies with questionable taste in men who love them; even if you’re unfamiliar with the images, you’ve certainly seen many fashion shoots that have hijacked them note-for-note since the ’90s. But Weinberger was much more prodigious with his personal stash of revealing rough trade portraits, which he made in the makeshift studio in the apartment he shared with his mother. “Subsequent Icons” showcases a series of sequential images of men disrobing from workwear and construction gear to nothing.
Gallery owner Jackie Klempay curated the exhibition. “I wanted to show the serial nature of the photos and imagine his interaction with these people in his mother’s home,” she said. “You see little bits of motorcycle jackets, boots, or helmets even while they’re totally nude. You can see the crossover between his interests. They’re not like Bob Mizer physique shots where they have perfect bodies. They have character.”
As a bonus, there’s a selection of unframed, one-off, full-frontal prints for sale. At the heart of Weinberger’s work is a fascination with vagabonds and rebels. “He’s portraying outsiders and people that have unconventional lives,” Klempay said. “That’s always attractive.”
“Subsequent Icons” is on view until February 25 at Situations, 127 Henry Street, NY, NY.

Mark Flood, “Tommy Puett,” at Elliott Templeton Fine Arts 
Mark Flood, Body in Space (1998). Courtesy of Elliott Templeton Fine Arts
“Tommy Puett,” a dynamo of masc bro blond mullet machismo, is chilling a few doors down at Elliott Templeton Fine Arts. Posing in a revealing tank or sprawled on the hood of a pink Cadillac, he looks like a ripped and raring-to-go 1991 porn bottom, featuring in these vintage late ’90s Mark Flood works. Yet Puett’s claim to fame was really as an actor on Life Goes On, a treacly prime-time ABC soap where he played the best friend to lead character Corky, who had Down’s Syndrome (Puett’s character met his tragic end drunk driving).
The portraits are lifted from teenie-bopper magazines—the divide between a 13-year-old girl and an adult gay man can indeed be very narrow. The artwork embodies equal parts sex jams and adolescent scrapbook obsessions as well as a touch of the unhinged and foreboding.
“I can act out my sex addiction or stay home and make art,” Flood explained in the 2020 artist monologue Mark Flood in the Nineties. Puett would pop up as a motif in Flood’s work throughout those years like a sun-kissed Zelig. Though the actor retired from Hollywood decades ago, perhaps grudgingly, he forever stars in Flood’s art. But who is the voyeur? Is it Flood or the viewer? Or is Puett watching us? Is he omniscient?
“Tommy Puett” is on view until February 11 at Elliott Templeton Fine Arts, 105 Henry Street, store #6, NY, NY.

Brian Buczak, “Man Looks at the World” at Gordon-Robichaux and Ortuzar Projects 
Brian Buczak Male Painting [View 1], (c. 1980). Courtesy Gordon Robichaux and Ortuzar Projects New York
Brian Buczak, who died of AIDS at age 33 in 1987, is getting his first solo exhibition since 1989 with a concurrent joint show at Gordon Robichaux in the Flat Iron and Ortuzar Projects in Tribeca with “Man Looks at the World.” Most of the works displayed had been hidden away for decades at the townhouse and studio he shared with his partner, the Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks who passed in 2018 (Alice Neel painted the duo, and Hendricks commissioned Phillip Glass to compose a requiem piece for Buczak).
Buczak wielded an arsenal of mediums and styles, but the Gordon Robichaux component focuses on his usage of symbology that incorporated Masonic imagery, corporate logos, Buddhist philosophy, porn mags, comics, phallic tower and silos, as well as breathtaking vistas. It was as if he was trying to simplify and make sense of the sensory overload of modern life and his place in it (as well as his destiny), juxtaposing visions of the westward-ho American dream and scenic buttes next to a hardcore cop three-way. In his spare time, he’d stencil his runic language on abandoned buildings.
“Man Looks at the World” runs until February 17, at Gordon Robichaux, 41 Union Square West, #925 and #907 New York, NY and at Ortuzar Projects, 9 White Street, NY, NY.

Linus Borgo, “Monstrum,” at Yossi Milo 
Linus Borgo, Narcissus at the Halsey Street Oasis, 2023 © Linus Borgo. Courtesy of the artist and Yossi Milo, New York.

In Chelsea, Linus Borgo’s enthralling debut solo show “Monstrum” is dense with mythos (both self-mythology and the ancient polytheistic sort). Borgo is a trans man who lost his hand in a near death experience his first year at RISD. The ramifications of this are rife in the work: Borgo deftly weaves between planes of existence, life, death, and the dream world in-between, piling up Renaissance master references and nods to the Greek pantheon next to glimpses of modernity. There is a gory element of soothsaying from reading animal entrails and a proud portrayal of the trans body clashing with scenes that correlate to societal vivisection.
Borgo himself makes frequent cameos, always staunchly depicting the reality of his hand—including multiple appearances as a merman—twice in the more classic sense, seemingly riffing off The Little Mermaid in the Copenhagen harbor whereas in another, he’s splayed out in a bathtub reminiscent of Darryl Hannah in Splash but with evident top surgery scars.
The work Narcissus at the Halsey Oasis depicts what looks like a late-night post-disco highway underpass revery—the subject is looking fly in his fur coat nightclub outfit and is looking at his reflection in a puddle. He doesn’t seem to see perfection in himself, but rather projects it onto the world and into this makeshift liquid mirror—the puddle is filled with flowers and lily pads instead of Brooklyn sludge.

“Monstrum” is on view until February 3 at Yossi Milo, 245 10th Avenue, NY, NY.

Richmond Barthé, Black Narcissus (1929) and Julius (1942). Courtesy of the estate of Dr. Samella Lewis and Ryan Lee Gallery.

Around the corner at Ryan Lee gallery, the 1929 sculpture Black Narcissus by Harlem Renaissance master Richmond Barthé (1901-1989) is a truly magnetic presence. (Barthé was the first Black artist to have work acquired by The Whitney). “In This Moisture Between Us Where the Guinep Peels Lay” is an intriguing dual show that pairs his sculptures with multimedia artist Christopher Udemezue, who was three when Barthé died.
“How he could make the Black male figure so strong, but so soft is something I thought about a lot,” said Udemezue, resplendent in a lace top and black cargo kilt, at last week’s opening. “I wanted to make the pictures have this kind of balance. How do we show Black men in this soft but very masculine way?” Both artists deal with Black figuration using very different methods of grace. Barthé’s work exudes spirituality; Udemezue channels and depicts it. “It makes sense on a spiritual level,” Udemezue said of the pairing.
Richmond Barthé and Christopher Udemezue: in this moisture between us where the guinep peels lay installed at RYAN LEE, 2024.

The link between the two artists is Jamaica, which they both see as a place of healing and queer rebirth. Barthé decamped there in the wake of a nervous breakdown and stayed for decades. Udemezue’s family hails from the island nation, and he is also founder of RAGGA NYC, a platform connecting queer Caribbean artists.
The second room segues into a solo Udemezue outing and is where the artist really hits his stride, with his feet on the ground connecting narratively to the past while reaching for the cosmos. A wall is painted black and overlaid with a ghostly apparition of his family’s countryside house, a constellation of family photos hovers above. An assemblage of foliage and rocks is placed in the foreground. Orbiting the room are stylized images of a Technicolor queer utopian Jamaican fantasia, complete with pointed ear demigods and starry skied bliss.
“in this moisture between us where the guinep peels lay” is on view until March 9, at Ryan Lee, 515 West 26th Street, 3rd floor, NY, NY

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A press release for Cindy Sherman’s new self-titled show at Hauser & Wirth’s Wooster Street location goes out of its way to draw a connection to the artist’s past. This exhibition, the description explains, “marks Sherman’s return to the historic SoHo district where, in the late 1970s, she debuted her now iconic Untitled Film Stills at the non-profit Artists Space.” 
We probably didn’t need the reminder. For a long time now, it’s been hard not to have the Film Stills in the back of one’s mind when taking in newer examples of the artist’s work. That early series—for which the artist photographed herself as a housewife, femme fatale, and other stock characters of old black-and-white films—has taken on a lot of weight in the 40-plus years since it debuted, and its achievements have only come into sharper focus as her pictures have grown weirder and more complex in the decades since.  
Installation view of “Cindy Sherman” at Hauser & Wirth New York. © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer.
The layered pictures that make up her current Hauser & Wirth exhibition definitely fall into the “weird” category, but they’re not weighed down by the past. Each comprises an amalgam of the artist’s own facial features collaged—Mr. Potato Head-style—atop studio portraits of herself caked in makeup and wearing various wigs. 
Who Sherman is trying to evoke isn’t totally clear, certainly not to the extent of past series, where she assumed the identities of specific historical figures (the aristocrats of Old Master paintings, say) or archetypes (socialites, “men“). But as with those efforts, there is an element of self-portraiture in the mix of these new pictures, too. No matter how many elaborate disguises Sherman puts on, she is, to some extent, always photographing herself. 
Even so, the veil of performance is particularly thin here. No one will mistake the show’s many Frankenstein-ed faces for the artist’s own, but the parts of Sherman we see in snippets are tender, vulnerable. On view—plainly, and in rich digital detail—is the 70-year-old artist’s aging skin, her pores, her creases.  
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #646 (2023). © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
“I’m not going to go into this aging process silently or happily,” she said in a New York Times profile published this week. “I feel like I’m preparing myself for it… This is what you’re going to get, so get used to it. It’s coming. It’s hanging over all of our heads.” 
The get-ups and collages turn the subjects of Sherman’s new portraits into caricatures, but she knows that time has a way of doing that too, turning us all into distorted, fractured reflections of our past selves. Sherman may no longer look like the ingenue from the Film Stills, but she is every bit the artist she was back then—and a lot more. 
See more images from Sherman’s new body of work below.
Installation view of “Cindy Sherman” at Hauser & Wirth New York. © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #650 (2023). © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #632 (2010/2023). © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Installation view of “Cindy Sherman” at Hauser & Wirth New York. © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer.
“Cindy Sherman” is on view at Hauser & Wirth, 134 Wooster Street, New York, through March 16.

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Josephine Baker made her debut as “Black Venus” in Berlin in 1926, performing the Charleston at the Nelson Theater on Kurfürstendamm. “Berlin feels great!,” she later enthused. “A pure triumph. They carry me aloft. In no other city have I received so many love letters, so many flowers and gifts.”
Almost a century later, a new exhibition is spotlighting her life and legacy at the German capital’s Neue Nationalgalerie. Photos, drawings, books, programs, record covers, and other archival documents elucidate not only Baker’s accomplishments in the realm of music, film, and dance, but also her work as a resistance fighter and civil rights activist.
Her output is shown side-by-side with the work of contemporary artists like Simone Leigh, Faith Ringgold, and Carrie Mae Weems, who have cited her as an enduring cultural influence.
Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri in 1906, Baker was a natural entertainer from a young age and started dancing in New York at 13. On her first world tour with the musical show La Revue Nègre, she arrived in Paris in 1925. At this time, European countries were still expanding colonial rule and racial segregation was common practice across the continent. Against this context, audiences nonetheless fell for Baker’s natural charms and she introduced them to African-American music and dance.
Though she became a movie star and a muse, Baker was also consistently Othered and hypersexualized. She often had to play to racist stereotypes, for example by wearing the banana skirt that she made iconic, or mimic popular minstrel caricatures in order to win the audience’s favor.
By the time she was 20, Baker had already endured two failed marriages with men who were significantly older. After this time, she had two more significant relationships before marrying the French composer Jo Bouillon in 1947. With him, she would continue to travel the globe, eventually adopting 11 children of different ethnicities that she referred to as her “Rainbow Tribe.”
During World War II, Baker became a spy for the Free France Committee and was sent on undercover missions, including transporting top secret information written in invisible ink on her scores across borders. Baker was also a champion of desegregation, which she insisted upon during her performances, and after the war became a delegate of the International Association Against Racism and Anti-Semitism.
In 1963, Baker was invited by Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at the March on Washington. “I am not a young woman now, friends,” she told the crowd. “There is not too much fire burning inside me. And before it goes out, I want you to use what is left to light that fire in you—so that you can carry on, and so that you can do those things that I have done.”
“Josephine Baker: Icon in Motion” is on view at Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Str. 50, Berlin, Germany, through April 28. Check out more images from the exhibition below.
George Hoyningen-Huene, Josephine Baker (1929). Photo: © George Hoyningen-Huene Estate Archives.
Josephine Baker, Paris 1927. Photo: © James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of Negro Arts and Letters, Yale University.
Baker, Josephine. Photo: © From the Collection: Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967 / Photographs of Prominent African Americans. James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Simone Leigh, Slipcover (2022–23). Photo: © Simone Leigh, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.

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One of the first dresses that Yves Saint Laurent designed for the house of Dior, the 1955 “Soirée de Paris” is a form-fitting number, masterfully crafted in black silk velvet and cinched at the waist by a long satin bow in contrasting beige. The historic garment is now on view at “Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style,” the newly opened exhibition at de Young Museum in San Francisco. It cuts an elegant figure on a mannequin. Might it look as good on you? Well, you don’t have to pull the dress off the display platform to find out. 
In a room just downstairs from the exhibition is an installation that allows you to “try on” said outfit using Snap’s augmented reality technology. The space is loosely divided into three segments, each fitted with a huge screen that Snap terms a mirror. Stepping in front of each of these mirrors, you can glimpse yourself draped in the Saint Laurent dress or two other ensembles, one by Versace and another by Bay Area designer Kaisik Wong.
Of course, Snap’s A.R. doesn’t just slap the outfit onto an image of you and call it a day. Move and the virtual clothing moves with you; twirl and it spins along. When you first step into frame, the piece even fades in on your physical body, with tiny animated sparkles to project Cinderella-esque magic. I was particularly taken with how the Saint Laurent dress flowed and the Versace gown conveyed heft, despite their obvious virtuality. 
“When you walk into a museum, you’re looking at the piece of art on the wall or the dress on the mannequin,” Rajni Jacques, Snap’s global head of fashion and beauty, told me in a walk-through. “But with augmented reality, you’re engaging with it, which remixes the storytelling and experience of going to a museum.” 
The A.R. try-on experience by Snap accompanying “Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” at de Young Museum. Photo: Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
This installation represents the first time that Snap’s A.R. mirrors have appeared in a cultural institution in the U.S. More often, the technology can be found in commercial or retail contexts. Its appearance at de Young, said museum director Thomas P. Campbell, serves both engagement and educational purposes (in the same way the museum’s 2022 Ramses exhibition leveraged virtual reality). 
“Our digital team had the idea of democratizing the exhibition by letting our visitors try on the clothes,” he told me. “It allows people to visualize themselves in these garments and helps them understand these dresses in a different way.” 
The A.R. activation is also aptly pegged to the museum’s latest exhibition, he added. After all, it’s not every day the museum brings these historic, often delicate garments to light—much less into the future with a high-tech boost. The show, in fact, marks the first time in more than three decades that de Young has presented its enviable costume collection, which it began building in 1895. 
Installation view of “Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” at de Young Museum. Photo: Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
For “Fashioning San Francisco,” the museum is displaying 100 pieces—by the likes of Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Pierre Balmain, Christian Lacroix, Comme des Garçons, and more—from its storied collection in a bid to trace the city’s history through fashion. It’s an expansive remit but one within which the show’s curator, Laura L. Camerlengo, sees a clear throughline.  
“We’re looking at about 100 years of fashion, considering the great 1906 earthquake in the city as a starting point,” she told me during a sneak preview of the exhibition. “Fashion becomes a way of showing resiliency in the wake of disaster, and it connects to the importance of philanthropy in the city.” 
Installation view of “Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” at de Young Museum. Photo: Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
That philanthropic spirit was evident during the rebuilding and redevelopment of San Francisco write large—but also in FAMSF’s own textile collection, which has benefitted from the largesse of the city’s residents. Many local women have donated pieces to the museum’s holdings through the decades, from socialite Denise Hale to entrepreneur Ruth Quigley to author Christine Suppes, who has gifted a whopping 500 ensembles to FAMSF to date. 
Their gifts are dotted throughout the exhibition, which is split into themes such as the “Little Black Dress,” “Well-Suited,” and “Avant-Garde.” To better weave in the San Francisco motif, the designs are stood up against backdrops reminiscent of the city’s iconic architectural gems, like the Palace of Fine Arts and the Cathedral of St. Mary.  
Installation view of “Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” at de Young Museum. Photo: Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Among the show’s highlights is “After the Ball,” a section devoted to a slew of extravagant gowns. At its center is a pair of diaphanous couture creations. The two dresses, Camerlengo explained, emerged from San Francisco manufacturers’ joint postwar bid to rejuvenate the city’s fashion industry. Following a trade agreement, France sent two Dior designs out to the West Coast for a publicity tour by the luxury department store I. Magnin & Company. 
“Then the company gave them to the museum, noting their importance in preservation for future generations ” Camerlengo continued. “They said they considered them the pinnacle of fashion and creativity.” 
Camerlengo also pointed out a 1985 design by Kaisik Wong, a sheer printed ensemble embellished with Chinese-inspired elements and paired with a highly structured lamé coat. The museum is home to the late artist’s archive, a trove of clothing, photographs, and ephemera acquired directly from his family with donor funds (the gift was exhibited at de Young’s 1995 retrospective, “True Couture: The Wearable Art of Kaisik Wong”). 
That Wong’s outfit was selected as one of the A.R. try-ons is down to the “considerations of the technology,” Camerlengo said, which called for pieces that covered most of the wearer’s body. But more so, “he was a San Francisco designer,” she added, “so it’s a nice way to showcase what we preserve here as well.” 
The Snap A.R. try-on activation at “Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style,” featuring models in designs [from left] by Kasik Wong, Versace, and Yves Saint Laurent. Photos courtesy of Snap Inc.According to Campbell, the show’s A.R. installation was some six months in-the-making, after the museum’s digital team landed on Snap. “They were impressed by the company for two reasons: their three-dimensional rendition of the garments and motion-responsiveness,” he explained. 
The Snap and de Young teams then worked closely to create 3D versions of the chosen outfits. These were animated and loaded into the A.R. mirrors, which were custom designed for the museum environment.  
“When it comes to building experiential moments, everything that we do is from the ground up. It’s never cut-and-paste,” Snap’s Jacques explained. “We want to talk to the people behind the scenes about their vision and how can Snap A.R. bring that vision to life.”
The A.R. try-on experience by Snap accompanying “Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” at de Young Museum. Photo: Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
This is not Snap’s first rodeo within the museum or art space either. It has partnered with the L.A. County Museum of Art for its multi-part Monumental Perspectives project, and more recently, with the Louvre for its Egypt Augmented program. The company’s Snap A.R. Lens has likewise been leveraged by artists including Damien Hirst and Alex Israel. 
Jacques won’t discuss the cost of building out an A.R. experience such as the one at “Fashioning San Francisco,” emphasizing instead the “synergy” between art and tech partners, and something way more valuable: cultural relevance. “We’re always seeking that,” she said.  
In turn, fitting for a technology that powers a social media app, Snap’s A.R. has injected an element of play into what could be a static showcase. Audiences leave with the experience of participation and if not, the ultimate memento: a selfie, which they can snap as they pose in the virtual fashions. 
“We want to create that experience so that when you leave the building, there’s an emotion attached to it. We want people to have fun and explore and just be, like, wow, I never even thought this could happen,” said Jacques. “I feel like people forget about the fun part.”
“Fashioning San Francisco: A Century of Style” is on view at de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, through August 11.
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The unicorn may be a mythical beast, but centuries’ worth of art and literature have made it quite real. An endless parade of Medieval tapestries, ancient Greek texts, Renaissance paintings, Bronze-Age seals, and fantasy novels has celebrated the horse-like animal with a single horn, seemingly willing it into being, compounding the creature’s ongoing mystique. “No place is more enchanted,” as Peter S. Beagle wrote in his 1968 book The Last Unicorn, “than one where a unicorn has been born.” 
Soon, the unicorn will be casting its spell at Scotland’s new Perth Museum, which will open “Unicorn” in March. The show is the first U.K. exhibition to survey the cultural history of the unicorn—also the national symbol of Scotland—from antiquity to present day. The animal’s footprint will be traced through illustrations, manuscripts, coins, paintings, sculptures, and tapestries, some of them historical loans and others objects of significance to the local community. 
“With a long, complex, and often contradictory history, the unicorn has been a popular subject for contemporary artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and activists,” said JP Reid, senior new projects officer at Culture Perth & Kinross, the trust that co-manages the museum. “It is a symbol through which ideas like authenticity, belief, gender, and nationalism can be explored.”  
Illustrated page from the Book of Hours by Grote Geert (1480–90), Delft, Netherlands. © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Some of the stars in the show include late-Renaissance painter Luca Longi’s Lady and the Unicorn (1534–40), on loan from the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo and on view in the U.K. for the first time, as well as John Duncan’s dreamy 1920 canvas The Unicorns, loaned from the Dundee Art Galleries and Museums Collection. 
A 19th-century ceremonial rod topped with a silver unicorn, which was featured in the coronation of King Charles III, is included here, alongside an Elizabethan pendant, crafted with narwhal tusk, once believed to come from unicorns.
“The Danny Jewel” pendant, England (ca. 1550). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
“Unicorn” will also delve into the contemporary resonance of the legendary beast in artifacts including toys, video games, and films. Its final section further explores how the unicorn has emerged as an icon of the LGBTQI+ community through six newly commissioned works by artists Alex Hayward, Ciaran Cannon, David Hutchison, GainAgain, Francis Macleod, and Kathryn Hanna. 
The exhibition inaugurates the Perth Museum, which is opening following a £26.5 million ($34.2 million) redevelopment of the former City Hall, an Edwardian building that once hosted events from concerts to political conferences. Upon launch, the museum will also permanently house the Stone of Destiny, one of the U.K.’s most significant relics that is returning to Perthshire for the first time in seven centuries. 
“The unicorn is an enduring symbol of Scotland’s enchanting history, culture, and landscape,” said Malcolm Offord, the U.K government minister for Scotland, in a statement, “so it is fitting that Perth Museum has chosen this as the theme of its first exhibition.” 
See more works in the exhibition below. 
Gold coin of James IV, King of Scots, Edinburgh (1488–1505). © National Museums Scotland.
John Duncan, The Unicorns (1920). © Dundee Art Galleries and Museums Collection.
Carved oak panel. © National Museums Scotland.
Carved narwhal tusk, England (ca. 1125–1150). © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Detail of a gilded and enameled unicorn holding a shield with the lion rampant, atop a silver baton, part of the regalia of the Usher of the White Rod. © By Permission of the Trustees and Factor and Commissioner of the Walker Trust. Photo: National Museums Scotland.
“Unicorn” is on view at Perth Museum, Perth Museum, St John’s Place, Perth, Scotland, March 30 through September 22. 

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