Exhibitions

The theme of the 16th Sharjah Biennial, the longest-running contemporary art biennial in the Gulf region, was an open-ended proposition: to carry. To its all-female curatorial team, it has manifold interpretations: to carry a home, to carry a history, to carry rupture, to carry resistance.
During the opening speeches earlier this month, a spontaneous Māori chant offered the perfect introduction to this vast exhibition, which was curated by Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala, and Zeynep Öz, and features 200 artists participating with a total of 650 works, including over 200 new commissions.
The show, ambitious in scale, is displayed at 17 venues alongside a program of performances, music, and films. Spread in the emirate of Sharjah, including sites in Sharjah City, Al Hamriyah, Al Dhaid, and Kalba, the selection of sites moves beyond white-cube spaces and museums, occupying historic buildings, schools, former markets, and even the desert.
Under the direction of Hoor Al Qasimi, daughter of Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, and ruler of Sharjah since 2003, the biennial’s ambition lies not only in its scale but also in its active reclamation of discussions around the Global South—discussions that have historically been led by Western institutions.
This edition of the Sharjah Biennial included a diverse artist list, with many emerging talents from regions across Asia, Africa, and Oceania, as well as a strong representation of First Nations and Indigenous art. While familiar artists like Arthur Jafa are also present, there are also many community-driven projects, such as the Thai group Womanifesto.
Here are five artists whose works you need to know.
Michael Parekōwhai
Michael Parekōwhai, He Kōrero Pūrākau mo te Awanui o Te Motu: Story of a New Zealand river, 2011. Photo: Cathy Fan
It’s hard not to be struck by Michael Parekōwhai’s work, which occupies an entire gallery space in Al Mureijah Square of Sharjah City. A major figure in New Zealand’s art scene for over 30 years, he remains relatively low-key and avoids the media spotlight. Often described as a “Duchampian” artist, he plays with art history, cultural identity, and personal narratives. 
Sun shines through the skylight, casting a stream on a Steinway piano painted in a bold red. Stepping closer, you notice finely carved details—it’s both a sculpture and a playable instrument. A male dancer joins in as people gather, followed by a tenor singer filling the room with his voice. Outside, there’s a desert city; inside, European music and traditional performance unfold. The piano’s surface features whakairo, a form of Māori carving, which connect to the artist’s family history and to the history of the piano itself. Ivory, ebony, shell, and pearl shimmer in the carvings of other elements on view. A Pipiwharauroa (shining cuckoo) clock, jewelry worn by the performers, and signal to these materials.
This work was first shown at the 2011 Venice Biennale, a project that took Parekōwhai ten years to complete. It draws from multiple inspirations, but its title, He Korero Purakau mo te Awanui o Te Motu: Story of a New Zealand River, comes from a 1920s New Zealand novel, which in turn inspired Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano.
John Clang
John Clang, Reading by an Artist, 2023 – ongoing. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Lavender Chang
Reading by an Artist might be the most enchanting experience I’ve had at a major art event. The presentation by Singaporean artist John Clang was understated—I was led by a fellow journalist to a secluded courtyard where the 52-year-old artist sat hidden behind a large hanging cloth, facing a single participant.
Clang, who lives between New York and Singapore, is known primarily as a photographer and started this project in 2023. This marks his first biennial appearance, where instead of taking portraits through lenses, he “reads” people using zi wei dou shu, an ancient Chinese fortune-telling method based on feng shui principles. The artist views human destiny as an epic codex not just to be perused, but to be interpreted and translated into tangible action to empower one’s life. 
Each session lasts an hour, during which he calculates a ming pan (destiny chart), treating it as a unique metaphysical portrait. The large hanging cloth did not display an individual ming pan, but rather that of the Sharjah Biennial itself. A waiting list quickly grew, with many arranging private readings afterward. Becoming a skilled zi wei dou shu reader takes years of study (and sometimes a decade) due to its intricate system of knowledge and practice. In another room, Clang shared reflections from past sitters. 

Cécile B. Evans 
Cécile B. Evans, RECEPTION!, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist
Cécile B. Evans explores the idea that language, memory, and emotion are not abstract, but are intricately connected to the physical world and particularly to ecological crises and technological storage. She presents a strikingly dystopian narrative in her latest work.
Upon entering the darkened exhibition space, visitors encounter a six-piece sculptural installation, immediately recognizable as a miniature model of the United Nations General Assembly Hall. However, beneath this sleek, orderly structure lies a compressed world of ruins—a storage space for the remnants of New York City. On closer inspection, fragments of the Statue of Liberty, bank signs, traces of Wall Street’s bull, and pieces of infrastructure like railways, all hint at the collapse of authoritative institutions. This space is renamed GAMMA (Global Archive of Memory Management and Archaeology). Another piece in the installation is a quilt made from shredded documents, including global trend forecasts from the CIA dating back to 1997.
Two video works, RECEPTION! and MEMORY!, further expand the narrative. The former debuted as a live installation at Paris Fashion Week for Miu Miu, while the latter was commissioned by the Sharjah Art Foundation. The story revolves around an ecological crisis that causes the mass disappearance of personal data. The protagonist, played by French actress Guslagie Malanda, is Reception—the last surviving translator at a data center responsible for transcribing and recovering memories. During a flood that engulfs the center, she transcribes others’ memories into English. However, when Reception translates a woman’s intimate memory, part of her own memory slips away. MEMORY follows the unraveling of this lost memory.

Kaloki Nyamai
Kaloki Nyamai’s assemblage paintings at Sharjah Biennial. Photo: Cathy Fan
Kenya-based artist Kaloki Nyamai’s assemblage paintings offer a powerful exploration of Akamba’s cultural heritage. These large canvases—each over 2.5 meters wide—hang and spill onto the floor, creating a striking visual and tactile experience throughout the exhibition. With a complex mix of visual and physical depth, the works make a powerful visual impact.
Nyamai was also one of the four artists representing Kenya at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. In Sharjah, the artist takes painting to new heights, layering newspapers, incorporating found documents, and stitching in thick, heavy seams. Abstract figures slowly emerge from the layers of acrylic paint, sisal ropes, photo transfers, and charred rubber threads, almost like memories coming in and out of focus. Many of the figures and moments are inspired by news imagery. A Nairobi native, Nyamai views his work as a continuation of the storytelling traditions passed down through generations. Nyamai challenges the oversimplified narratives around Kenya’s history and identity, offering a richer alternative. He compares the act of stitching to symbolically bringing together a community that has been torn apart by violence. The paintings on display are also named after Nyamai’s ancestral language, Kikamba.

Suzanne Lacy
Suzanne Lacy, The Circle and the Square, 2015-2017. Image courtesy of the artist
If I had to pick just one piece at this year’s Sharjah Biennial that represents the world we live in today, it would be this one. American artist Suzanne Lacy, also a social activist, is known for coining the term “new genre public art.” Most of her work focuses on social and urban issues, using community conversations to express important ideas.
At the Biennale, Lacy presented a deeply moving piece. Her two-screen film The Circle and the Square is based on a project that came together during a three-day event in September 2016. Shape Note singers from England performed alongside a local Sufi group in an old mill. Hundreds of voices filled the space, blending Shape Note singing with Dhikr, an Islamic chanting practice. The event was shaped by months of community discussions and concluded with a dinner for 500 local residents.
The three-year project addressed racism, labor, and global trade. It focused on the decline of the textile industry in Pendle, Northwest England, and its impact on both South Asian and white mill workers. The project is also presented with interviews, a timeline, photographs, and other documents.
The Sharjah Biennial is on view until June 15, 2025 More

Between 1963 and ’64, as the Beatles toured the globe, Paul McCartney snapped hundreds of photos of his daily life. In between candid shots of his bandmates and images of foreign locales, they offer a rare peek into Beatlemania, as seen from the inside. “There’s a sort of innocence about them,” the bassist reflected in 2023.
A trove of these photos has made its way across museums from the U.K. to the U.S. for the past two years. But there’s more where that came from. A show in Beverly Hills will soon surface yet more previously unseen images from McCartney’s archives, which will be offered for sale.
In April, Gagosian will present 36 works by McCartney, some of them newly rediscovered, created between December 1963 and February 1964. They were shot in Liverpool and London in the U.K., Paris, France, as well as New York, Miami, and Washington, D.C.
At this time, the Beatles had embarked on their first tour of the U.K., hot on the heels of their number one album, With the Beatles, released in November 1963. The following year saw them descend on Paris, then New York, where they made their now-legendary debut appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February. By the end of the month, they had made the cover of Newsweek, in a front-page story that trumpeted “Bugs About Beatles.”
Paul McCartney, Poolside at the Pollaks’, Miami, 15 February 1964. Photo: © Paul McCartney, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
“Everything was new to us at this point,” McCartney recalled of that era, adding of his photographs: “They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of the many reasons I love them all, and know that they will always fire my imagination.”
The Gagosian exhibition features a mix of black-and-white and color photographs, among them self-portraits and intimate views of John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. They also capture the pandemonium that greeted the band, with some images showing what it looked like through the windows of moving vehicles.
Paul McCartney, Being chased by fans on West 58th Street, New York City, 12 February 1964. Photo: © Paul McCartney, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.
Besides serving as an indelible document of Beatlemania, the pictures showcase McCartney’s deft photographer’s eye and his skill with his 35mm Pentax camera.
“Taking photographs, I’d be just looking for a shot. I’d aim the camera and just sort of see where I liked it, you know, ‘oh, that’s it.’ And invariably, you pretty much take one picture,” he told CBS last year. “We were moving fast. So, you just learned to take pictures quickly.”
In collaboration with Gagosian, the musician has also created signed prints of his photographs in small editions, which are available for sale and priced from $12,000 upwards. A portion of the proceeds will benefit relief and recovery efforts following the destructive L.A. wildfires.
A visitor looks at photographs taken by Paul McCartney in Miami. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
The Beverly Hills outing coincides with the ongoing touring exhibition, “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm.” After opening at London’s National Portrait Gallery in 2023, it has made stops at the ⁠Chrysler Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum, as well as in Japan at Tokyo City View. It will travel to the de Young Museum in San Francisco on March 1 and Frist Art Museum in Nashville on November 7.
An accompanying monograph, 1964: Eyes of the Storm, brings together 275 of McCartney’s photographs along with his captions and reflections on living through Beatlemania.
“To look at the love and the wonder of what we went through that’s captured in a lot of these photographs is the whole thing,” he said of his trove. “It’s what makes life great.”
“Paul McCartney” is on view at Gagosian, 456 N Camden Dr, Beverly Hills, California, April 25–June 21. More

Spain’s Prado Museum is mounting an exhibit that brings together the works the Greek painter Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco, completed for the Monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in his first major commission.
The exhibit reunites works that El Greco, a master of the Spanish Renaissance, made for the church, and marks the first time they have been brought together since their dispersion, thanks to to the loan of the main altarpiece, The Assumption, by the Art Institute of Chicago which has owned it since 1906.
El Greco, The Assumption of the Virgin (1577–79). The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Nancy Atwook Sprague in memory of Albert Arnold Sprague.
In The Assumption, the Virgin Mary ascends to heaven on a crescent moon over Jesus’s open tomb while aided by a group of angels. It has a companion, made for the attic of the altarpiece, titled The Trinity, that visually connects above it. For it, El Greco used works by Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer as references. It is housed at the Prado Museum.
In the main altarpiece, The Assumption is flanked by four other canvases which depict John the Baptist and St. Bernard on the left side and John the Evangelist and St. Benedict on the right side, which were meant to act as intermediaries between the earthly realm and the divine. Those works are housed at the monastery and in private collections.
El Greco, The Adoration of the Shepherds. Photo: Colección Fundación Botín
Other works El Greco made for the altarpieces include a depiction of the Adoration of the Shepherds, a scene from the nativity; the Resurrection; and The Holy Face, an iconographic depiction of an apocryphal story in which a woman obtained the “true image” of Jesus from a cloth he had wiped his face on.
An article in the Spanish newspaper El Pais seems to indicate that the only work of the nine not included in the exhibit is the portrait of St. Bernard, which has been housed at the Hermitage Museum in Moscow and unable to travel.
El Greco, Saint Benedict. Photo: © Museo Nacional del Prado
And for the works that are housed at the monastery, a team from the Prado Museum had to convince the nuns to let them borrow the paintings.
“It was difficult,” Leticia Ruiz, the head of the Prado’s Spanish Renaissance painting collection, told the newspaper. She added that the monastery also lives off of its visitors and from the sale of “delicious marzipans” that they make. So, the museum agreed to restore one of its pieces by the painter Eugenio Cajés in exchange for the loan.
Funnily, the Prado Museum’s exhibit comes several years after France’s Louvre Museum tried, and failed, to borrow three works by El Greco from them. One of those works was The Holy Trinity, which the French museum hoped would round out its massive retrospective with dozens of the artist’s work.
Image of the exhibition galleries El Greco. Santo Domingo el Antiguo. Photo: © Museo Nacional del Prado
El Greco was first documented in Spain in June 1577 and quickly received the commission for the new monastery, which was designed and jointly paid for by a powerful dean of the cathedral named Diego de Castilla and a Portuguese woman named Doña María de Silva. According to the museum, the two benefactors were buried at the monastery. The Greek artist was appointed to make the altarpieces at the suggestion of Diego’s son Luis de Castilla, who had met him in Rome a few years earlier. He completed it in 1579.
“The result could not have been more dazzling. He revealed himself as a perfectly developed artist, with a creative maturity that linked him to some of the best painters of the Italian Renaissance,” the Prado Museum said on its website. “These canvases also captured the fundamental aspects of El Greco’s characteristic pictorial construction.”
“El Greco. Santo Domingo el Antiguo” is on view at Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, through June 15, 2025. More

The first major exhibition of work by Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) has touched down in New Delhi, India, featuring over 200 pieces by the Surrealist master. It’s drawn from the collection of the artist’s long-time collaborator, collector, and print publisher Pierre Argillet (1910–2001), and curated by his daughter, Christine Argillet.
A dedicated supporter of the Surrealists, as well as Dadaists and Futurists, Pierre Argillet began working with Dalí in the 1930s, before his daughter was even born. The younger Argillet grew up in the orbit of the artist, who nicknamed her the “The Little Infante,” as reported by the Independent.
“My earliest memories are of my summers spent near Dalí’s house in Port Lligat, Spain, from 1961 to 1973,” Argillet told me in an email. “Dalí invented all sorts of games and stratagems to amuse us and himself. One day it was with mustache cologne and a herb he picked on the hills behind his house that, when mixed, allowed him to hold his mustache straight and he could even wave them without moving, another time he showed us how with flowers resembling jasmine he could induce fantastic dreams.”
“Salvador Dalí: The Argillet Collection,” which opened earlier this month at the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre, and is now on view at Massarat Gallery, thanks to the Bruno Art Group, is free to visit. The works on view range from etchings to watercolors to tapestries, all based on a close collaboration between artist and publisher.
Christine Argillet as a child with Salvador Dalí. Photo courtesy of Christine Argillet.
“We saw Dalí every day, and it was the only way for my father to get the works he had commissioned,” Argillet said. “If we were not there, Dalí had no qualms about selling the editions for which he had a contract with my father.”
The artist never visited India himself, but the exhibition does highlight his connections to the country.
Salvador Dalí, Marguerite, “Faust” (1969). Courtesy of the Bruno Art Group.
“Dalí was fascinated by India, especially the West’s fascination with Indian mysticism in the 1960s and 1970s,” Argillet told the BBC.
In 1967, Air India hired Dalí to design porcelain ashtrays for first class customers. The edition of an estimated 500 featured an ingenious design in which the legs of the tray appeared to be both elephants and swans, but were actually the same form inverted.
Salvador Dalí, The Cosmonaut, “The Hippies” (1969–70). Courtesy of the Bruno Art Group.
In return, he asked for—and received—an elephant as payment, writing that “I wish to keep him in my olive grove and watch the patterns of shadows the moonlight makes through the twigs on his back.” (Instead, the elephant lived at a zoo in Barcelona until its death in 2018.)
And when Argillet and her father visited India in the 1970’s, the photos he took became the basis for “Hippies,” a series of 11 prints by Dalí.
Salvador Dalí, The Corridor of Katmandu, “The Hippies” (1969). Courtesy of the Bruno Art Group.
“His idea was to present a set of works relating the spiritual quest of young Westerners sometimes leaving barefoot for India or Nepal,” Argillet told me. “Dalí always showed a very open-mindedness for all cultures.”
The exhibition features examples from many of the etching series that Dalí produced with Argillet, including “Faust” (1969), based on the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe play; and “Mythologie” (1963–65), inspired by stories from Greek mythology such as Icarus, Theseus and the Minotaur, and Leda and the Swan.
Salvador Dalí, Leda and the Swan, “Mythologie” (1964). Courtesy of the Bruno Art Group.
Argillet remembers the creation of some of these works: “He immersed an octopus found on the beach in acid to form the imprint of Medusa,” she said. “Everything was subject to discovery and experimentation.”
There are also the 50 prints Dalí designed for his 1934 edition of Comte de Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror, a bizarre and violent 19th-century French poetic novel that became something of a group obsession for the Surrealist movement.
Salvador Dalí, The Banquet, “Don Juan” (ca. 1970). Courtesy of the Bruno Art Group.
Argillet told me she hopes that exhibiting these works in India and around the world will help make Dalí’s prints better known: “My father was an excellent publisher, but a bad manager.”
“Salvador Dalí: The Argillet Collection” is on view at Massarat Gallery New Delhi, Savitri Cinema Complex, GK-II, New Delhi, India, February 15–March 16, 2024.  More

Martin Scorsese’s 1980 sports film Raging Bull crescendos with a knockout of a fight. In it, the titular Jake LaMotta squares off against Sugar Ray Robinson in a tense, dramatic bout, the scene made even more energetic by a restless camera and snappy editing. However spontaneous those shots appear on screen, they were diligently storyboarded by Scorsese in pencil sketches that visualized every punch and thrust, bob and weave.
“These storyboards are not the only means of communication for what I imagine,” the filmmaker told Phaidon in 2011, “but they are the point where I begin.”
Storyboard by Martin Scorsese (1979), for Raging Bull (1980). Martin Scorsese Collection, New York.
Scorsese’s hand-drawn storyboards for his Oscar-winning drama are now among the 800 objects on view at “A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema” at Osservatorio, an outpost of Fondazione Prada in Milan. The exhibition peeks behind the scenes of filmmaking over the past century to unpack the many creative processes behind the medium. More than 50 directors, cinematographers, graphic designers, animators, and choreographers have contributed storyboards and other material from drawings and poster designs to mood boards and photographic references.
Poster drawing by Henri Alekans, for Wings of Desire (1987), directed by Wim Wenders. Courtesy of Wim Wenders Stiftung.
Storyboards, though, dominate most of the show. As Scorsese alluded to, these annotated visual representations of a film’s sequences help communicate a director’s vision to a crew, aiding in decisions ranging from camera angles to character development.
“Storyboarding is an integral part of the process,” said the exhibition’s curator Melissa Harris. “Visually setting a scene and then plotting out its ebbs and flows may help the film team consider relationships between characters, figure out how to advance the narrative, or realize how to convey the essence of a particular segment.”
Storyboard by Max Douy, for Dune (1973–77), directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky (unproduced film). © Institut Jean Vigo (Fonds Max et Jacques Douy).
Directors and storyboard artists have taken diverse approaches to the medium. Scorsese’s pencil drawings join the likes of Agnes de Mille’s plain sketches for Oklahoma! (1955). But on the more detailed spectrum are Max Douy’s storyboards for Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s doomed Dune adaptation, which forefront set and character design, and Bernando Bertolucci’s highly shaded panels for Little Buddha (1993), which indicate some manner of high drama.
Storyboard by Bernando Bertolucci (1992), for Little Buddha (1993). Courtesy Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation and Recorded Picture Company. © Fondazione Bernardo Bertolucci and Recorded Picture Company, digitalizzazione: Progetto Bertolucci/Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna.
Others take an artier approach. Agnès Varda’s storyboards for Salut les Cubains (1963) are appended with photographs that serve as source material, while Jay Clarke’s animated storyboards for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) provide meticulous detail and a sense of timing.
Storyboards by Agnès Varda (1962), for Salut les Cubains (1963). © Agnès Varda Estate – Agnès Varda Photographic Archives on long-term loan to the Institut pour la photographie.
Harris also pointed out in the press announcement how the form and identity of a film’s character might emerge from these storyboards. They could come in handy, she said, “when something does not seem quite convincing in a character or a physical interaction, or even provide visual references for the actors.”
Cases in point are Pablo Buratti’s detailed panels for Pedro Almodóvar‘s Julieta (2016), which center on the journey of its titular character; and Todd Haynes’s collaged image boards for I’m Not There (2007), which capture the many metamorphoses of its protagonist, Bob Dylan. “When you put one image next to another,” Haynes told the New York Times in 2016, “it says more than the two separately.”
Top: Storyboard by Pablo Buratti, for Julieta (2016), directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Courtesy Pablo Buratti. Bottom: Still from Julieta (2016), directed by Pedro Almodóvar, produced by El Deseo. Courtesy El Deseo D.A. S.L.U., photos by Manolo Pavón.
“A Kind of Language,” though, makes room for storyboards for films with zero narrative or character development. Or at least one of them: Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s 1929 Surrealist touchstone, Un Chien Andalou, a 16-minute silent film threaded through with dream logic. Inspired by their nighttime visions, the pair wrote the screenplay for the movie in a few days—a fevered stretch reflected in Buñuel’s hastily scribbled notes and bizarre drawings of human forms and anatomy.
Script page by Luis Buñuel for Un Chien Andalou (1929), directed by Luis Buñuel. © Luis Buñuel Film Institute.
“No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind,” Buñuel reflected of the movie in his 1983 memoir, “would be accepted.” But even that, it turned out, called for some form of storyboarding.
“A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema” is on view at Osservatorio, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan, Italy, through September 8. More

Cherokee-Choctaw artist Jeffrey Gibson has become an unmistakable voice on the international stage, with works in various disciplines championing Indigenous and queer identities, all in a riotous color palette and marked by eye-popping geometric designs. An upcoming museum show promises to extend the artist’s growing ubiquity.
“Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me” will open in May at Los Angeles’s Broad Museum. It will present an adaptation of the U.S. Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, where Gibson was the first Indigenous artist to represent the country with a solo exhibition. It also happens to be the artist’s Southern California institutional debut, and will include over 30 works comprising paintings, sculptures, flags, murals, and a video installation. 
Jeffrey Gibson, 2023. Photo: Brian Barlow.
The works refer to official 19th- and 20th-century American legal documents, lyrics from pop songs, and quotes from civil rights activists, among other sources. The show’s title comes from the Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s poem Ȟe Sápa, which contemplates Indigeneity and is partly arranged in a geometric format.
“Developing this project for the Venice Biennale made me interrogate my relationship with the United States as an Indigenous person,” said Gibson in press materials. “I wanted to showcase that complexity while celebrating the resilience and joy present in the liberation stories and legacies of Indigenous makers. 
“The show is about turning margin and center inside out, putting topics and people who have been pushed aside in the spotlight,” Gibson continued. “I’m excited for the project to reach audiences in Los Angeles—in a way it’s coming home, from representing the country on an international stage to speaking to histories that are part of our lived experiences here in the U.S.”
Abigail Winograd, Jeffrey Gibson, and Kathleen Ash-Milby pose at the entrance to the U.S. Pavilion at the Giardini during the 60th Biennale Art 2024 on April 16, 2024 in Venice, Italy. Photo: Stefano Mazzola/Getty Images/
Artnet News picked the Venice presentation as one of the standout national pavilions, with our Europe News Editor Margaret Carrigan calling it unsubtle in its blood-red evocation of genocide and ethnic cleansing and yet at the same time somehow joyous. 
One of the paintings Gibson showed in Venice, THE RETURNED MALE STUDENT FAR TOO FREQUENTLY GOES BACK TO THE RESERVATION AND FALLS INTO THE OLD CUSTOM OF LETTING HIS HAIR GROW LONG (2024), has been acquired by the Broad. It incorporates the titular text in a vivid, bright, abstract design that incorporates glass beads; the text quotes a 1902 letter written by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to a California school superintendent, lamenting Indian students’ failure to assimilate.
Jeffrey Gibson, THE RETURNED MALE STUDENT FAR TOO FREQUENTLY GOES BACK TO THE RESERVATION AND FALLS INTO THE OLD CUSTOM OF LETTING HIS HAIR GROW LONG (2024). Courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio. Photo: Max Yawney.
Also on view will be two works from Gibson’s 2020–21 Brooklyn Museum exhibition “When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks.” In one of those pieces, an equestrian bronze sculpture, Charles Cary Rumsey’s The Dying Indian (ca. 1904), shows a slumped figure wearing newly commissioned moccasins by John Little Sun Murie titled I’M GONNA RUN WITH EVERY MINUTE I CAN BORROW (2019), after lyrics from the 1971 Roberta Flack song “See You Then.”
Other works on view will include giant ceramic sculptures like the nine-foot-tall WE WANT TO BE FREE (2024), made with colorful nylon fringe, tin jingles, and steel, with the titular text, which refers to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (not a typo!) spelled out in beads. That act was the first federal law to define citizenship and claim all citizens equal under the law, and was meant to apply to formerly enslaved people.
Jeffrey Gibson, WE WANT TO BE FREE (2024). Courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio. Photo: Max Yawney.
The more recent civil rights act also makes an appearance in the large-scale mixed media painting ACTION NOW ACTION IS ELOQUENCE (2024), which refers to words spoken by New York Democratic House Representative Emmanuel Celler to his fellow representatives during a session of Congress in 1964.
Beloved singer Nina Simone inspired the work BIRDS FLYING HIGH YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL (2024), its title taken from the song “Feeling Good,” written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse and made popular by Simone in a 1965 recording. Avian shapes appear alongside a geometric rendering of the title text.
Installation view, “Jeffrey Gibson: When Fire Is Applied to a Stone It Cracks,” Brooklyn Museum, 2020–2021. Photo: Jonathan Dorado.
“Jeffrey Gibson imbues unabashed radiant color into his paintings, murals, sculpture and video installations, signaling through his art that frank examination of difficult truths can be affirmative expressions of hope, identity and beauty,” said Joanne Heyler, founding director of the Broad, in press materials.
The Venice Biennale presentation was organized by the Portland Art Museum, Oregon, and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, commissioned by SITE executive director Louis Grachos, and curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, a member of the Navajo nation and curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum, along with independent curator Abigail Winograd. The Broad’s presentation is organized by curator and exhibitions manager Sarah Loyer with the participation of Winograd.
“Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me” will be on view at the Broad, 221 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, May 10 through September 8. More

Strings first showed up in Barbara Hepworth’s practice in 1939—and remained threaded throughout her practice. To the British sculptor, they served her perceptual aims, allowing dramatic views of her carvings from every angle, while representing her connection to nature. Strings, she once noted, were “the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind, or the hills.”
Hepworth’s imaginative use of string is now getting the spotlight in a new show at London’s Piano Nobile gallery—the first exhibition to delve into this aspect of her oeuvre. “Barbara Hepworth: Strings” explores how the artist has woven the material into her famed sculptures, paintings, and drawings, including objects going on view in the U.K. for the very first time.
Installation view of “Barbara Hepworth: Strings” at Piano Nobile. Photo courtesy of Piano Nobile.
“Hepworth is known to us today for her adventurous use of metal and rock to break down the boundaries between space and mass, giving the same value to both,” said curator Michael Regan. “Equally, as this exhibition will show, she used strings to create in her sculptures the tension between light and darkness, presence and absence, solidity and weightlessness.”
The show arrives as Hepworth’s sculptures continue to command the art market. Her auction record is $11.5 million, according to the Artnet Price Database, achieved by her 1970 work The Family of Man: Ancestor II at Christie’s in 2023. The blockbuster sale of Paul Allen’s collection at the same auction house in 2022 saw Elegy III (1966) fetch $8.6 million, her second highest auction result; more recently, Sotheby’s sold Sea Form (Atlantic) (1964) for $5 million in June 2024.
Barbara Hepworth, Curved form (Wave II) (1944, cast 1959). Photo courtesy of Piano Nobile.
Born in 1903 in West Yorkshire, Hepworth moved just before World War II to St. Ives in Cornwall, where she found a studio that allowed her to “work in open air and space.” It’s here that she would commence her stringed works, inspired by the region’s natural landscapes. The exhibition features objects including Small Stone With Black Strings (1952), a dainty work that represents Hepworth’s only stringed stone sculpture, and Curved Form (Wave II) (1959), in which the strings enclose an organic form.
Barbara Hepworth, Small Stone With Black Strings (1952) on view at “Barbara Hepworth: Strings” at Piano Nobile. Photo courtesy of Piano Nobile.
Also included is an intriguing piece from Hepworth’s “Orpheus” series, based on the mythical bard and his trusty lyre. Theme on Electronics (Orpheus) (1956), in fact, was the first in the series, commissioned by electronics company Mullard for its London office. The sculpture went on view at the firm’s headquarters atop a motorized base—a display that, alas, failed to work to Hepworth’s satisfaction.
In letters recently unearthed by Piano Nobile, the sculptor wrote repeatedly to the company through the 1970s to lament the installation. In a 1966 missive, she noted that “the turntable never seems to work.” In yet another letter, she said, “during the last decade, I have often been very dismayed to find that either the work was not moving around, or, if it did, it jerked.”
Barbara Hepworth, Theme on Electronics (Orpheus) (1956). Photo courtesy of Piano Nobile.
After Mullard’s closure, then Hepworth’s death in 1975, ownership of Theme on Electronics was transferred to Philips, which had acquired Mullard. The work was deemed lost until the 2000s when it was snapped up by a private collector, who has loaned it out for its first exhibition.
Another sculpture making its U.K. debut is Pierced Hemisphere (Telstar) (1963). Drawing on the silhouette of the commercial satellite Telstar, it features strings emanating from one of Hepworth’s signature pierced forms.
Barbara Hepworth, Pierced hemisphere (Telstar) (1963). Photo courtesy of Piano Nobile.
Elsewhere in the show is a maquette for perhaps Hepworth’s best known stringed work, Winged Figure (1963). For decades, the 19-foot-tall sculpture has hung on the side of the John Lewis department store on London’s Oxford Street, its twin bladed wings webbed by intertwined stainless steel rods. The maquette on view, created with sheet metal and rods, was the model that John Lewis gave the nod to.
Barbara Hepworth’s Winged Figure on display the day after its installation on the side of the John Lewis department store in London, 1963. Photo: Roger Jackson / Central Press / Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
Strings and lines also found their way into Hepworth’s drawings, some of them sketches and studies for her eventual sculptures. The exhibition surfaces Oval Form With Strings (1960), an energetic swirl in which a network of lines appears to be consumed by an oval opening, as well as 1942 works Forms in Movement (Circle) and Lines in Movement, which offer vivid juxtapositions of lines, planes, and geometric shapes.
Barbara Hepworth, Forms in Movement (Circle) (1942). Photo courtesy of Piano Nobile.
“When I start drawing and painting abstract forms, I am really exploring new forms, hollows, and tensions which will lead me where I need to go,” Hepworth once reflected. Each element injects new dimensions into her work, she added: curves and planes offer “pure rhythm,” colors a “mood of place and time,” while strings “can twist one from the front to the back.”
“Out of all these components, I search for new associations of form and hollow and space,” she said, “and a new tautness and awareness for the growth of new sculptures.”
“Barbara Hepworth: Strings” is on view at Piano Nobile, 96 and 129 Portland Road, London, the U.K., through May 2. More