Exhibitions

There is a lot to think about in a one-room exhibition at the nonprofit Brooklyn art venue Recess, where the Gaza Biennale has touched down for its first North American outing. Including 25 Palestinian artists, “From Gaza to the World” is what the organizers are calling the New York pavilion of a roving exhibition they have termed (after some debate) a biennale, launched in 2024 and since then developed by the Forbidden Museum of Jabal Al Risan. 
Seeing this show is an exercise in feeling powerless, and I’m afraid anything I say in the face of these works will be hopelessly banal. But it is essential viewing. Set against the context of the ongoing Israel-Gaza War, the exhibition bears witness to life under bombardment, famine, and displacement. Artists keep creating work, desperate to express themselves, to be heard, to be remembered, to live.
Malaka Abu Owda, When the Body Became a Message (2024). Courtesy of the artist and the Gaza Biennale.
Many of the artists in the Biennale continue to make work in Gaza, while some are displaced. The organizers of the Gaza Biennale said that the show “makes evident the challenges that Palestinian artists face in presenting their work globally, raising questions such as: how do you exhibit art that’s inaccessible while under siege, yet endures despite a genocide?”
Israel launched its war in Gaza in 2023 with the stated goal of eliminating the threat from the militant group Hamas, which attacked a music festival on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 people hostage, many of whom have yet to be released. The resulting military action in the Gaza Strip has seen its infrastructure destroyed, with nearly 90 percent of its population displaced. Gaza’s Health Ministry estimates the death toll at more than 64,000, about half of them women and children. The World Health Organization and a UN-backed panel have declared a famine in the territory and Amnesty International, the United Nations special rapporteur, and some countries have alleged Israel is committing a genocide. Israel denies the claim, calling the war an act of self-defense.
Mohammed Moghari, Tent (2025). Courtesy the artist and the Gaza Biennale.
Since it is difficult for people and artworks to escape Gaza in the current conditions, many of the objects on view are documentation of the art being produced there: printouts of paintings, a facsimile of an artist’s notebook, and the like, with wall labels specifying the materials of the original pieces. Many of the works are straightforward, offering documentary presentations of life in displaced persons camps, and mournful renditions of death and destruction. Extensive wall labels include heartbreaking quotes from the artists and plentiful biographical information.
Greeting visitors near the entry is a small tapestry by Firas Thabet, Gaznica (2025), which adapts Picasso’s famous antiwar painting Guernica; a tearful woman in a keffiyeh overlooks a scene of wailing women, with Palestinian flags waving. A wall text notes that Guernica, too, was reproduced as a tapestry, in which form it hangs in the United Nations headquarters, just a few miles away.
Fatima Ali Abu Owdah, How Alone You Were (2025). Courtesy of the artist and the Gaza Biennale.
Some of the most powerful words in the show came from the artist Fatema Abu Owda, accompanying printouts of sand-hued ink drawings with text from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s book In Praise of the High Shadow. “No one survives here,” she says, “they just slowly decay. I search for peace among the remains of those who are gone.” 
Emad Badwan’s docudrama Live Broadcast (2024) shows two journalists in the West Deir al-Balah refugee camp, helmeted, in flak jackets emblazoned with the word “press,” trying to broadcast from a rooftop overlooking endless tents. “Guys, can anyone hear us?” one asks, noting that there’s no signal to be had. It’s an effective metaphor. The camera studies children playing hopscotch, building sand castles. Voices complain of missile strikes on civilians. A lot of the action takes place as one of the journalists waits in an interminable bathroom line.
Emad Badwan, film still from Live Broadcast, (2024).  Courtesy of the artist and the Gaza Biennale
A painting of a destroyed city by Motaz Naim could be an allover abstraction; it has the misfortune here of being reproduced only in a projection, so we have no idea of its scale or texture. But it does effectively echo photos of whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble, and reminds the viewer that landscape painting can be profoundly political.
Murad Al-Assar has four paintings on view, in a faux-naive style, one showing a girl who had her leg amputated; another shows four children, a bomb over each one’s head; another shows a child trying to block their ears from the noise of war as bombs drop in the distance. Text nearby relates the artist’s experience of trying to distract his children from terror on a winter night among the noise of war. The painting of the amputee is based on a rendition of the girl by his 13-year-old daughter, who said that she “should appear strong.”
Motaz Naim, The Mural in the Silence of Destruction, from the series “Gaza and Its Destroyed Cities” (2024-25). Courtesy of the artist and the Gaza Biennale.
The show gives rise to some thoughts. It’s seemingly an article of faith among many people in my circles that art is “impotent and frivolous,” as Art in America’s Emily Watlington recently put it, and that feeling is easy to understand in a context where the market drives much of the conversation, and art is often positioned as a luxury. 
Murad Al-Assar, Noise of Death (2025). Courtesy of the artist and the Gaza Biennale.
Their lives under constant threat, these artists continue to make work in an open-air prison at best, an open-air mass grave at worst. Are they foolish to believe in art’s efficacy? “Poetry is not a luxury,” wrote Audre Lorde. “It is a vital necessity of our existence.” So, too, is art for these artists in Gaza, and therein is its power.
“From Gaza to the World” is on view through September 14 at Recess, 46 Washington Street, Brooklyn, New York. An abbreviated version will be on view September 18–December 20. Other iterations of the Biennale are soon to be on view in Walla Walla, Washington; Istanbul; Athens; Valencia, Spain; Sarajevo; and Berlin. Other pavilions appeared previously at other European sites, and future exhibitions are planned internationally. More

If you spend much time in New York, you are probably among the the six million or so who ride one of the world’s largest and oldest subway systems each day. You may have the New Yorker’s classic love-hate relationship with the system, which can take you practically anywhere for a few bucks, but is notoriously underfunded and run-down. And if so, artist Chloë Bass’s latest project may just speak to you. Literally.
If you hear something, free something is the New York native’s first sound art project, and it is the first-ever takeover by an artist of the sound system in Gotham’s labyrinthine subway complex. Waiting on selected mezzanines, riders hear a deep, attention-getting tone (designed in collaboration with artist Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste), followed by one of 24 announcements—though the voices may challenge the definition of that last word, as what you’ll hear isn’t always strictly informational, but rather evocative.
An audience gathered to hear a performance organized by Creative Time for Chloë Bass’s new sound project, at the Fulton Street Center. Photo: Ally Caple, Courtesy Creative Time
Last week, in the first moments of the New York fall season, dozens of observers gathered at the massive Fulton Street Center to see a group of 10 performers, scattered throughout the atrium, deliver a performance of the texts, composed by Bass.
“What we hear changes how we feel,” says a voice in one recording. “How we feel changes what we do. And what we do changes the world around us, even if just for a moment.”
Another is a dialogue between two voices. “Remember when Aretha Franklin died and people were singing her songs together on crowded train cars?” asks one. “It was amazing. Everyone was sad, and everyone was smiling,” responds the second. “It was a moment when I wanted to say to the city, ‘You see? That’s how you are,’” says voice one, to which voice two responds, “All these little private worlds coinciding out in public.” 
Each announcement—they will play in English, Spanish, Arabic, Bangla, Haitian Kreyòl, and Mandarin—is followed by the title of the project, which recalls the ubiquitous exhortation “If you see something, say something,” urging riders to protect each other from danger—or, if you like, surveil one another. Ticker displays transmit a brief explanatory text penned by the artist. Posters in the stations will also clue straphangers in to the project, but it may just be that some will hear the announcements while not seeing the posters, and go on about their day with a bit of mystery. 
Sounding Off About Sound
Sound is one of the things that drive subway riders crazy, I pointed out in a phone interview with the artist. Announcements from conductors often come over the speakers in a garbled mess, and riders look around at one another, incredulous, hoping it’s not life-saving information being conveyed. Some stations are also so loud as to be potentially damaging to the human ear.
“Complaining about sound in the subway is a New Yorker’s birthright,” acknowledged Bass, who noted that generations of her family have lived here. “We’re being given information of different forms, and sometimes it’s decipherable and sometimes it’s indecipherable. But recently it’s been mostly about ways that we should make sure to keep ourselves and others safe.”
Chloë Bass. Photo: Naima Green.
“I support the idea of public safety,” she added, “but the announcements are all about monitoring your behavior and the behavior of people around you, and we already know about ways to keep safe, even without thinking about them. There are other ways to use public address to ground these forms of safety that we practice together.”
New York public art presenter Creative Time approached Bass with the same question it poses to the artists it solicits: What’s your dream public project? Having created a mosaic that combines found photographic imagery and her poetic texts at a Brooklyn subway stop in 2023, the artist was already thinking about the subways, and jumped at the chance to have the nonprofit support a project that would go wider. Over the years, Creative Time has presented numerous high-profile projects, including Tribute in Light (2002), which recreates the Twin Towers in light annually on the site where they stood, and Kara Walker’s massive sugar sphinx, A Subtlety… (2014). It also organizes a much-anticipated annual convening, the Creative Time Summit.
“If you hear something, free something engages the largest transit system in the Western Hemisphere, a place where an incredible complexity of public life unfolds,” said Creative Time curator Diya Vij in press materials. “The MTA serves millions of New York City residents daily, spanning every single neighborhood and social boundary. It is where every denomination of New York City meets. For this truly public art work, Bass offers a monumental but fleeting gesture that seeks to change the way we relate to each other in public life and public space. She asks us to consider, if we change what we hear, can we change how we feel, and in turn, will we be better neighbors?”
Public Input on Public Interventions
Bass maintains a multifarious practice; Creative Time describes her as “a multiform conceptual artist working in performance, conversation, situation, publication, and installation.” The new work continues a thread that has been present in past works by the artist, which have also constituted an intervention in systems of public communication. One past project I saw dealt with visual signage; in 2020, the Studio Museum in Harlem presented her show “Wayfinding,” in a Harlem park, just as society was beginning to reopen after pandemic shutdowns. Three billboards throughout the park asked the questions: “How much of care is patience? How much of life is coping? How much of love is attention?”
A performer reads a script in a performance launching Chloë Bass’s Creative Time project If you hear something, free something (2025). Photo: Ally Caple, Courtesy Creative Time
In addition to the Studio Museum project, Bass has had recent solo projects at upstate New York’s Buffalo AKG Art Museum; California African American Museum at Art + Practice, in Los Angeles; Skirball Cultural Center, also in L.A.; and the Pulitzer Art Foundation in St. Louis. She also recently had her first solo commercial exhibition, “Chloë Bass: Twice Seen,” at New York gallery Alexander Gray Associates. That show was billed as “a multifaceted investigation into the nature of representation, positioning racial and cultural hybridity as foundational to American identity.”
The public was involved with If you hear something even before a sound was ever recorded. The artist conducted four preparatory focus groups, one with teenagers through East Harlem arts nonprofit Artistic Noise, one with straphangers, one with transit advocacy groups, and one with Metropolitan Transit Authority workers; all were paid for their time, but, said Bass, even those required to be there for work brought “real sentiment and thoughtfulness.”
That was encouraging, Bass said, “because this is a scary project. New Yorkers have a lot of opinions, and not everything is ideal for everyone—ever.”
If you hear something, free something is at the following subway stations through October 5, courtesy of Creative Time:
Bronx: Westchester Square (6) and 167 Street (B,D)
Queens: Court Square (7,G), 74th Street – Broadway (7), and Mets Willets Point (7)
Brooklyn: Clinton-Washington Avenues (G), Fort Hamilton Parkway Brooklyn (F,G), York Street (F), and Atlantic Avenue / Barclays Center (2,3,4,5).
Manhattan: Grand Central (S), 5th Avenue Bryant Park (7), Fulton Street (4,5), 163 Street Manhattan (A,C), and Union Square (4,5,6). More

Washington’s loss is Baltimore’s gain. “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” a retrospective that the artist pulled in protest from a planned presentation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in the nation’s capital, will instead appear at the Baltimore Museum of Art, just 40 miles to the northeast. The show will open November 2. 
“Baltimore has always been part of my DNA as an artist,” said Sherald in a press release. “Every brushstroke carries a little of its history, its energy, its people, and my time there. To bring this exhibition here is to return that love.”
The artist yanked the show from what was to be its final venue over censorship concerns. She said that she learned that her painting Trans Forming Liberty (2024), which reminagines the Statue of Liberty as a Black trans woman, might not be shown due for fear of offending the Trump Administration. The president has spoken out on numerous occasions about museums being too “woke” and has specifically targeted the Smithsonian for showing works he deems offensive. The White House included Trans Forming Liberty on a list of artworks released under the heading “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian.”
Amy Sherald, Trans Forming Liberty (2024). Image courtesy the artist and Hauser and Wirth. © Amy Sherald. Photo: Kevin Bulluck.
The museum, speaking to the New York Times, which first reported the cancelation, presented a different account of what happened during the planning of the show. The museum told the Times that the painting was never going to be replaced, but rather “contextualized” with a video that, according to Sherald, was to show people reacting to the painting and discussing transgender issues. The Smithsonian maintains that Sherald misunderstood the museum’s proposal. In any case, the video itself may have been enough of a red flag. “The video would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility and I was opposed to that being a part of the ‘American Sublime’ narrative,” Sherald told the paper.
Sherald secured her place in art history when she painted an official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama in 2018. She also gained widespread attention for her 2020 portrait of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police while sleeping in her home in Louisville, Kentucky; the portrait was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Speed Art Museum jointly acquired the Taylor painting. Both the Obama and Taylor portraits are in the retrospective.
Amy Sherald, Ecclesia (The Meaning of Inheritance and Horizons) (2024) on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo: Sansho Scott / BFA.com
“American Sublime” is the most comprehensive presentation of Sherald’s work to date, exploring her career since 2007 and featuring about 40 paintings. A presentation at the NPG would have been meaningful in several ways: the artist was the first African-American woman to win the museum’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2016, before her rise to stardom, and she would have been the first Black contemporary artist with a solo show at the museum. The NPG outing would also have capped the show’s tour, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in January before touching down at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in April.
But the Baltimore presentation will be meaningful in its own way. Sherald earned her MFA in painting from the city’s renowned Maryland Institute College of Art, and was living there when she achieved national recognition. The BMA acquired her painting Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between in 2018, the year it was made, and has included her in several group shows since then. She was already slated to be an honoree at the museum’s 2025 gala in November. 
The Baltimore Museum of Art. Photo by Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images.
“I’ve had the great pleasure and joy of knowing Amy Sherald for a decade,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s director, in press materials. “In that time, she has become a cultural force, capturing the public imagination through works that are powerful and resonant in their profound humanity. Amy’s story is also deeply intertwined with Baltimore. Beyond her education and time lived in our beloved city, Baltimore is rooted in her subjects, on her canvases, and in her titles.”
“American Sublime” will remain on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, through April 5, 2026. More

The summer is over and the fall art season has officially kicked off in New York City. The cultural calendar is chock-full of art fairs, museum shows, and of course gallery exhibitions. There’s something for everyone, from art historical rediscoveries to emerging talents, plus performances and works on offer in every conceivable medium. Read on for our picks of shows to see this week.

“Mercedes Matter” at Berry CampbellSeptember 5–October 4, 2025
Mercedes Matter, Untitled, (ca. 1848). Image Courtesy of Berry Campbell.
The latest forgotten woman of Abstract Expressionism ripe for renewed attention is the late Mercedes Matter, who is getting her first solo show at Berry Campbell. (The gallery has previously helped revive the reputations of female Postwar artists such as Lynne Drexler.) One of the first abstract painters in the U.S., Matter was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936 and became a key figure of the Ab-Ex movement. And in addition to her studio practice, Matter, who studied under Hans Hofmann, was an important arts educator, founding the New York Studio School in 1964. The exhibition offers an overview of her unjustly overlooked career, from early figure drawings to mature, large-scale canvases that meld abstraction and figuration with bold and colorful brushstrokes, as well as some of Matter’s late charcoal drawings.
Berry Campbell is located at 524 West 26th Street, New York, New York.
—Sarah Cascone 

“Julio Torres: Color Stories” at Performance Space New YorkSeptember 3–September 22, 2025
Julio Torres at Performance Space New York. Image Courtesy of Color Theories.
At the core of Julio Torres’s work is art—whether in Problemista, his surreal comedy set on the fringes of the New York art world with Tilda Swinton, or in the world-building of Fantasmas, his Peabody-winning HBO series. Both projects share the visual audacity and outré fashion that have become Torres’s signature, shaped by his years orbiting galleries and institutions as an amused, skeptical outsider.
That sensibility carries into Color Theories, his off-Broadway debut at Performance Space New York, a venue with deep experimental roots that feels perfectly suited to a comic whose stand-up has always bordered on performance art. Here, Torres blends design, dream logic, and wry humor into a theatrical exploration of how colors map onto feeling and memory. Expect something between comedy, theater, and art piece, with Torres as both spirit guide and trickster.
Performance Space New York, Keith Haring Theater, is located at 150 1st Avenue, 4th floor, New York, New York. Tickets are available at color-theories.com
—William Van Meter 

“Gabrielle Garland: I’ll Get You, My Pretty, and Your Little Dog Too” at Miles McEnerySeptember 4–October 25, 2025
Gabrielle Garland, I’m glad he’s single because I’m going to climb that like a tree. —Megan, Bridesmaids (2011) (2025). Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery.
It is the first New York solo show for Gabrielle Garland, whose neon palette and use of skewed scale and perspective lend a surreal note to her paintings of suburban homes. Each house takes on a personality of its own in her square compositions, homes captured under the blazing sun at the heat of midday, at golden hour, or in the dark of night, illuminated by street lamp or porch light. Garland paints her subjects with an undeniable reverence, but not in the pursuit of photorealism, instead embracing the unreliability of our memories. Letting certain architectural elements loom larger than life creates distortions that are at once endearing and unsettling, lending character to what whether others might see as cookie cutter housing developments.
Miles McEnery is located at 511 West 22nd Street, New York, New York.
—Sarah Cascone 

“Omar Ba: Promises and Glory” at TemplonSeptember 3–October 25, 2025
Omar Ba, Promises and Glory, (2025). Image Courtesy of Templon.
Omar Ba conjures fantastical worlds. Sometimes they’re quite alarming. Trained in Senegal before continuing his studies in Geneva, Switzerland, Ba has long woven together African and European traditions, critiquing both with equal brio. In layered works of paint, pencil, pen, and Indian ink, faceless dictators loom over tanks and soldiers and Christianity melds with animism. America has now entered the mix. Following a 2020 residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, Ba now splits his time between New York and Dakar. At Templon Galerie he presents 30 new portraits that, though rooted in the city, wander across the Atlantic and back again.
Templon is located at 293 10th Avenue, New York, New York. 
—Richard Whiddington

“Kat Ryals: Showroom Dynasty” at 5-50 GallerySeptember 6–October 12, 2025
Kat Ryals, Pattern Recognition. Image Courtesy of Michelle Silver.
There is more than meets the eye to the 10 ornate-looking rugs from Kat Ryals’s “Rug” series for the Brooklyn artist’s first solo show with 5-50. Each work is actually a large multimedia collage, the ornate pattern of a 17th-century Savonnerie French rug created using a variety of both natural and artificial objects, including poker chips and other gambling paraphernalia. Ryals then takes high-resolution photographs of these labor-intensive tableaux, printing them at life-scale on velvet rugs using a commercial dye sublimation print process. The result is the illusion of luxury, an image of various detritus masquerading as a hand-woven textile, much as a Las Vegas casino apes the opulence of the baroque, while promising visitors a shot at capturing such wealth for themselves.
5-50 Gallery is located at 5-50 51st Avenue, Long Island City, New York. 
—Sarah Cascone 

“June Edmonds: The Sky Remains the Same” at Galerie LelongSeptember 4–October 25, 2025
June Edmonds, Still Point, (2025). Courtesy of Galerie Lelong.
This marks L.A.-based artist June Edmonds’s first major solo show in New York, featuring new paintings inspired by “ebe-amen,” a river leaf motif. The ebe-amẹn, featured as a quatrefoil or symmetrically shaped form, is prominently showcased in metallic plaques from the Kingdom of Benin, where it was associated with the power and protection of kings and deities.
Edmonds has long centered her practice in researching major events in Black American art and history, For this body of work, “The Sky Remains the Same,” she recontextualizes the historic, sacred geometric form. Bonus: On Saturday September 6, at 3 p.m., the gallery will present a conversation between Edmonds and independent curator jill moniz. The talk is free to attend, and the gallery requests visitors register here in advance.
Galerie Lelong is located at 528 West 26th Street, New York, New York. 
—Eileen Kinsella

“Bilgé: 1975” at Sapar ContemporarySeptember 5–October 13, 2025
Bilgé, Threshold state (1975). Image Courtesy of Sapar Contemporary.
The late Turkish American Bilge Civelekoğlu Friedlaender, known as Bilgé, is currently the subject of her first U.S. museum solo show, with an impressive outing at New York’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Art. Her second exhibition at Sapar Contemporary hones in on the works of a single, watershed year, with watercolors, collages, and sculptural works made using torn paper—a technique that helped Bilgé redefine her practice after she had destroyed nearly every canvas she had ever made just three years prior. The show makes the case that moving beyond the confines of the canvas allowed Bilgé to find herself, and a new style imbued the austerity of minimalism with an undeniable romanticism.
Sapar Contemporary is located at 9 North Moore Street, New York, New York.
—Sarah Cascone 

“9 Women, 20th Century” at NagasSeptember 3–October 25, 2025
Amaranth Ehrenhalt, Untitled (1966). Courtesy of Nagas.
Nagas is paying tribute to the great dealer Peggy Guggenheim’s landmark 1943 show “Exhibition of 31 Women,” which was the first all-woman art show, with a wide-ranging exhibition that includes both artists who have recently enjoyed renewed attention, like Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini, and others who remain obscure. There’s Louise  Janin, a California artist who moved to Paris and developed her own art forms she dubbed cosmogrammes, swirling pigments in liquid to create abstract compositions. Also largely unknown because she spent much of her career in Europe is Amaranth Ehrenhalt, a second generation Abstract Expressionist painter who embraced vibrant colors. Other intriguing figures in the exhibition include British Surrealist Grace  Pailthorpe and Filipino textile artist Pacita Abad, who recently enjoyed a stunning traveling retrospective.
Nagas is located at 47 West 28th Street, Floor 2, New York, New York.
—Sarah Cascone 

“Spencer Finch: One Hundred Famous Views of New York City (After Hiroshige)” at James CohanSeptember 5–October 4, 2025
Spencer Finch, One Hundred Famous Views of New York City (After Hiroshige), (2025) (detail). Image Courtesy of James Cohan.
As a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design, Spencer Finch took to meticulously copying Claude Monet paintings, an experience he described as “his first brush with Stockholm syndrome.” One wonders what Finch has to say about Hiroshige, the 19th century Japanese woodblock master whose “100 Famous Views of Edo” he has spent the past year channeling. Here, New York plays the muse. Fitch laid a period map of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, over a contemporary one of New York and then photographed the corresponding locations. He focused on Hiroshige’s spring paintings, adopting their shapes, cut-outs, and formats across 42 watercolors. The city emerges in slices and half-familiar fragments, an assembly James Cohan calls Finch’s “love letter” to his long-time home.
James Cohan is located at 52 Walker Street, New York, New York. 
—Richard Whiddington

“Echoes and Evolutions: Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels” at Spruth MagersSeptember 5–October 25, 2025
Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels (1973–76), Great Basin Desert, Utah. © Holt/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo: ZCZ Films/James Fox, courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation.
If you’ve yet to take the time to make a pilgrimage to Sun Tunnels (1973–1976), Nancy Holt’s famed earthwork in the remote Utah desert, the next best thing just might be the late artist’s first show at Sprüth Magers New York. The show includes drawings, collages, and photographs related to the work, many of which have not been previously exhibited. An installation of four large concrete cylinders lying on their sides in an x-formation, Sun Tunnels is positioned in alignment with the movements of the sun, so that it frames the sunrise and sunset on the Winter and Summer Solstices .A pair of earlier sculptures from her “Studio Locators” series are also included in the exhibition, short steel pipes mounted at eye level, as if they are telescopes without lenses, framing views of the same objects they originally pointed at in Holt’s studio, as referenced in the titles, Locator (Exhaust Pipe) and Locator (Two Windows). 
Sprüth Magers is located at 22 East 80th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York.
—Sarah Cascone 

“John McAllister: Sun Sundry Beguiles Wild” at James FuentesSeptember 5–October 5, 2025
John McAllister, ablaze rapt chorus beaming, (2025). Courtesy of James Fuentes.
This marks masterful landscape painter John McAllister’s seventh solo show at James Fuentes, featuring seven new large-scale works that further the artist’s exploration of painting as an immersive field. Inspired by his bike rides through the woods where he resides in Massachusetts, McAllister is a a keen observer of New England’s contrasting seasonal extremes. At the center of the show is ablaze rapt chorus beaming (2025), a sprawling nine-by-fourteen-foot panorama infused with yellow light. Though McAllister is deeply inspired by Impressionism and Fauvism, he aims “less at representation than at evocation,” according to the gallery.
James Fuentes is located at 52 White Street, New York, New York. 
— Eileen Kinsella
“Kahlil Robert Irving” at CanadaSeptember 5–October 18, 2025
Kahlil Robert Irving, Gold GrainedBOX&Gravel[Handle{Terracotta = Architectural Ornament}]news, 2023–2025. Image Courtesy of Canada.Time moves strangely in the work of Kahlil Robert Irving. Taking inspiration from a digital archive that he started in 2012, the images and objects reproduced in his work are recognizably contemporary but simultaneously like products of some ancient archeological dig. Irving noted, “my ceramic sculptures engage in a kind of slow photography, using the kiln as an exposure unit transforming wet malleable clay into ceramic… it is a kind of deep time.” Fresh off his major travelling solo show “Archaeology of the Present”—shown at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, respectively—Irving is set to debut a new body of work at Canada in “EF3+E40.” Here, a range of paintings and sculptures tap into parallel realities, one physical the other digital, suggesting new pathways between the two.
Canada is located at 60 Lispenard Street, New York, New York.
—Annikka Olsen More

A rarely seen work by the great Italian artist Caravaggio (1571–1610), the master of chiaroscuro who helped usher the Renaissance into the Baroque period, is coming to Florida for an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. The canvas, titled Boy Bitten by a Lizard, is the star of a show featuring 40 paintings by the Caravaggisti, as the renowned artist’s followers have come to be known.
“It’s really fascinating to see the enormous impact of this single revolutionary artist,” Stanton Thomas, the MFA St. Petersburg’s chief curator, told me.
Titled “In Caravaggio’s Light: Baroque Masterpieces from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi,” the exhibition is drawn from the holdings of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, an institute founded in 1970 by Italian art historian Roberto Longhi (1889–1970). A leading Caravaggio scholar, Longhi is credited with rehabilitating the artist’s reputation after a long period during which Baroque art was decidedly out of fashion. Flying in the face of popular opinion, Longhi recognized the power of Caravaggio’s dramatically lit images, with all of the emotion and psychological intensity bound up in the realism of his canvases.
“During the 19th century, and even before that, Baroque painting was seen as overdramatic and in poor taste,” Thomas said. “And with Caravaggio, who was so peripatetic and just not very well understood or documented up until that point, Longhi recognized the quality of the paintings. And then he was able to do the archival research to discover more about Caravaggio’s life, and also to reattribute things to Caravaggio himself. So he’s really the person who single-handedly revived the career of this extraordinarily influential artist.”
Valentin De Boulogne, Denial of Saint Peter (ca. 1615–17). Courtesy of Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy.
An Art Historian Who Collected What He Studied
While Longhi was helping restore Caravaggio’s rightful place in the pantheon of art historical greats, he and his wife, fellow art historian Anna Banti, were also buying forgotten masterpieces of the era. Their collection is technically open to the public at the foundation’s Florence headquarters, where it can be visited by appointment, but has remained largely unseen by American audiences.
The last time Boy Bitten by a Lizard was in the U.S. was in 2012, at Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum. Before that, it was 1940. And the larger Longhi collection has never had a dedicated outing in this country. (The show previously traveled to Poland and France, but this is its first time off the continent.)
Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard (1593–94). Collection of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence.
There is another autograph version of the work at London’s National Gallery, but this is a rare opportunity for American audiences to see the dramatic composition without taking a Transatlantic flight.
“We’ve all had that moment where something really uncomfortable suddenly happened to us.
It’s an amazing gesture—the young man is pulling his shoulders back and recoiling, with this look of shock and pain on his face. And it’s so true to life. I think that it still compels people to look at it centuries later because it is so realistic,” Thomas said. “Enhancing that is that beautiful light, the figure emerging from the shadowy recesses, this wonderful contrast between the shadows and the very pale skin. And then you get an even greater sense of luminosity because of that wonderful little still life where the lizard’s been hiding and the extraordinary vase.”
The MFA St. Petersburg exhibition will actually feature at least two original Caravaggio paintings, with Boy Bitten by a Lizard being joined by two copies of Boy Peeling Fruit, an early composition by the artist that he is believed to have painted multiple times while training in the workshop of artist Giuseppe Cesari (1568–1640). (Earlier this year, a Baroque art expert claimed to have found the earliest known version of the work, and by extension, the first known painting by Caravaggio.)
At the MFA, one will be on loan from a private collection in Rome, and the other is from Longhi’s collection—when he originally bought it, the art historian thought it was an autograph Caravaggio, but he later identified it as a copy. The foundation stands by that opinion, but it is more generally accepted as the real deal.
“Our understanding of Caravaggio has evolved since then, thanks to new technical examinations and better understanding of the artist and his career. One of the most exciting things about this exhibition is the chance to compare two versions,” said Thomas, who strongly suspects Longhi might have been right the first time. “I’m billing the show as two-and-a-half Caravaggios!”
Caravaggio, Boy Peeling Fruit (ca. 1593). Opinions vary on whether this work is an original or a copy. Courtesy of Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy.
Why Is Caravaggio So Important? 
Today, Caravaggio is one of art history’s biggest names, with any potential discovery of a new work by the artist making headlines around the world. Earlier this year, a blockbuster exhibition in Rome, “Caravaggio 2025,” brought together 24 examples of his work, and had to extend its run to meet audience demand.
An authenticated Caravaggio has not hit the auction block in modern times, according to the Artnet Price Database—although a purported rediscovered second version of his Judith Beheading Holofernes was snapped up by a private buyer ahead of a planned 2019 auction where it was expected to fetch up to €150 million ($171 million).
Another painting, originally attributed to a follower of another Baroque artist, was set to be auctioned in Spain in April 2021, until it was identified as a Caravaggio. The work, Ecce homo (1604–05), subsequently went on view at the Museo del Prado Museum in Madrid and sold last year to a British collector for €36 million ($39 million).
“In many ways, I see Caravaggio as the Baroque spirit,” Thomas said. “He’s the first person to really look to the street to find models who were from the lower classes. They were prostitutes and beggars, and that gives us sudden realism to his work. And of course, there’s the tenebrism. There’s that incredible lighting, as if a flashbulb on an old-fashioned camera went off. All of a sudden you see these wonderful shadows with these faces, these gestures emerging from the darkness. And this was something that people hadn’t seen before.”
Carlo Saraceni, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (ca. 1615–20). Courtesy of Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell’Arte Roberto Longhi, Florence, Italy.
An Artist Who Inspired Many Who Followed
We only know of one artist who studied formally under Caravaggio, a mysterious painter known as Cecco del Caravaggio. But because so many of Caravaggio’s works were public commissions, in some of Rome and Naples’s most important churches, his work became widely influential.
“One of the things that’s fascinating about the Caravaggisti is that it wasn’t just people in Rome and Naples.
Artists were traveling to Rome from all over Western Europe, particularly the low countries, both Holland and Belgium, but also France, as well as Spain. And they would come and see Caravaggio, and then they would travel back to their own countries and spread [his influence] further,” Thomas said.
That dissemination across Europe is clearly illustrated in the exhibition. From Caravaggio’s native Italy, there is Carlo Saraceni’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes, from about 1610 to 1620. From the Netherlands, there are a pair of dramatic religious scenes by Matthias Stomer (ca. 1600–after 1652). And from France, there is Valentin de Boulogne’s (1591–1632) The Denial of Saint Peter, from about 1620.
“It shows that moment just a few hours after Christ has been arrested and Peter is shaken and he denies him. It’s this amazing image of accusation and self-doubt,” Thomas said.
Jusepe Ribera, San Bartolomeo (1613). Collection of the Fondazione Roberto Longhi, Florence.
The show also features five paintings of the apostles from a series by the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) that Thomas called “shockingly contemporary in their directness, in their realism, and in their absolutely profound emotional content.”
Particularly striking is his depiction of Saint Bartholomew (San Bartolomeo), from about 1613. De Ribera has painted the apostle and martyr, who was flayed alive, as an old man holding up his skin, with his face clearly shown.
“In the other hand, he holds a hunter’s knife. And it’s a very specific type of knife, which shows that Ribera did his homework,” Thomas said. “And the saint has this extraordinary look on his face, looking directly out at the viewer. It looks much more like a portrait than an image that would be used for worship. It’s one of the most profound, gritty, modern things that I’ve seen that belongs to the Baroque. It’s extraordinary.”
Reza Aramesh, Study of the Head as Cultural Artefacts (2023). Private collection. Photo: courtesy of the artist and Datan Gallery.
Thomas has also organized a companion exhibition, “Baroque Continuum,” that illustrates how that influence has continued throughout the centuries to the present day. Among the artists featured is contemporary Iranian sculptor Reza Aramesh (b. 1970), who makes classically inspired works in bronze and marble.
“The three pieces by Reza I’ve borrowed are severed heads, and they look like martyred Roman Catholic saints from 1600,” Thomas said. “They’re unbelievably beautiful and powerful and go great with an exhibition which features Judith and the Head of Holofernes. It ties in very nicely to further illuminate how Caravaggio impacted the history of art and continues to do so today.”
“In Caravaggio’s Light: Baroque Masterpieces from the Fondazione Roberto Longhi” will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg, Florida, October 25, 2025–March 22, 2026. 
“Baroque Continuum” will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg, Florida, October 18, 2025–March 22, 2026 More

More than 500 years after his death, Raphael continues to enthrall new generations. Though he is best known for world-famous masterpieces like The Sistine Madonna, the Renaissance master produced over 500 works that are scattered across the globe. Next year, more than 200 will travel to the Met in New York for the first-ever comprehensive U.S. exhibition dedicated to Raphael.
“The seven-year journey of putting together this exhibition has been an extraordinary chance to reframe my understanding of this monumental artist,” said curator Carmen Bambach, of the Met’s drawings and prints department. “It is a thrilling opportunity to engage with his unique artistic personality through the visual power, intellectual depth, and tenderness of his imagery.”
Raphael, The Sistine Madonna (1512–13). Photo: VCG Wilson / Corbis via Getty Images.
Visitors to “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” will be taken on journey from the artist’s early life in Urbino to his triumphant emergence as one of the greats of the High Renaissance in Florence. There, he competed against rivals like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo for the most prestigious commissions before moving to the papal court in Rome, where he led a busy workshop in realizing hugely ambitious projects, including the Raphael Rooms at the Vatican. His prolific career was cut tragically short in 1520, when he died of an illness at the age of 37.
The landmark exhibition will open at the Met’s Fifth Avenue location on March 29, 2026, running through June 28, 2026. It will feature some of Raphael’s more celebrated achievements alongside much rarer, lesser known pieces, providing a sweeping insight into every element of his varied practice. Audiences will appreciate the breadth, clarity, and harmony of his vision thanks to a wealth of preparatory sketches, large-scale paintings, tapestries, and decorative objects.
Raphael, Self portrait (1506–08). Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria delle Statue e delle Pitture. Gabinetto fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi – Su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e del Turismo.
Incorporated into the show’s chronological structure are a series of overarching themes that will unite its treasures and demonstrate the uniqueness of Raphael’s ideas. Rich historical context will piece together the cultural and intellectual worlds that the artist inhabited in Rome and Florence, as well as his notable contributions to the debates of his day.
“Visitors will have an exceptionally rare opportunity to experience the breathtaking range of Raphael’s creative genius through some of the artist’s most iconic and seldom-loaned works from around the globe–many never before shown together,” promised the Met’s director Max Hollein.
Raphael, Alba Madonna (c. 1511). Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Among the highlights will be The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna), one of the paintings that will have traveled the shortest distance from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This painted tondo from around 1511 has moved between distinguished European collections, including those of the Spanish Dukes of Alba and Nicolas I of Russia, who passed it on to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. It is exemplary for its idealized, classical interpretation of the gentle Madonna, and will be reunited with preparatory drawings that now belong to the Museum of Fine Arts in Lille, France.
More artworks have been loaned from a long list of leading international museums, including the the British Museum and National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Galleria Borghese and Vatican Museums in Rome, the Uffizi in Florence, the Prado in Madrid, the Albertina in Vienna, and the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Curator Carmen Bambach previously worked on the celebrated blockbuster exhibition “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer” at the Met in 2017. The once-in-a-lifetime offering pulled in huge visitor numbers, over 700,000, making it one of the museum’s all time most visited exhibitions. More

Nature can be an instructive guide for overcoming technological barriers. In 1969, the American engineer Otto Schmitt coined a term to describe the practice of science pulling from nature’s source code, biomimetics. The word might have been new with Schmitt creating an electrical circuit based on the neural systems of squids, but the inclination was centuries old. One early proponent was Leonardo da Vinci, whose own approach to biomimetics abound in the polymath’s notebooks.
Human flight was a particular fascination. From the 1480s to the 1490s, Leonardo turned to birds for inspiration, hoping to circumvent the limitations of human strength by understanding wings and their flaps. Alas, the weight of the mechanical devices Leonardo conjured up proved too cumbersome and so he turned from flapping to gliding wings. The flying devices were called ornithopters and are best illustrated in the Codex Atlanticus through a group of red chalk and ink drawings that detail wing joints and the system of straps necessary to tie man and machine together.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus laid out his pursuit of human flight. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
Ultimately, human flight took another shape with the advent of first propeller and later jet engines, but the team at Château du Clos Lucé in Amboise, central France, has brought Leonardo’s flying machine to life in a device made of wood, rope, and canvas. It hangs above visitors as the dramatic culmination of “Biomimicry: Taking Inspiration from Nature,” an exhibition that draws a line from Leonardo to contemporary engineers and shows the instructive genius of nature. The 500-year-old drawing itself sits in a low-lit niche beneath the ornithopter.
Amboise is where Leonardo spent the final three years of his life. Shortly after ascending to the throne in 1515, Francis I invited Leonardo to France to serve as the king’s leading painter, engineer, and architect. Enticed by a generous pension and the promise of creative freedom, Leonardo accepted and settled in the 15th-century château, which was a short walk from the king’s own Château d’Amboise. Ever since opening to the public in the 1950s, Clos Lucé has celebrated this connection and in recent years has held exhibitions on Leonardo’s relationship with perfumes, anatomy, architecture, and unfinished paintings.
Installation view of “Biomimicry”. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
As the myth of Icarus shows, Leonardo did not invent biomimetic and in the centuries long gap before the practice was granted a name, nature proved recurrent a font for human creation. In the 16th century, German armor adopted metal plates taken from rhinoceros hides and British shipbuilders designed hulls that took on the shape of fish.
With the Industrial Revolution and the development of wrought-iron and steel, analyzing bone structures helped engineers optimize load-bearing. The cantilever bridge, for one, looked to the spine of a bison. Using photography to study the movements of birds frame-by-frame brought the likes of Otto Lilienthal and Clément Ader ever closer to cracking the secrets of flight.
The modern world teems with examples. Velcro drew from burdock seeds, Japan’s bullet trains looked to kingfishers, airplanes adopt the properties of shark skin, and robotics companies use animal anatomy as a starting point.
Engraving of a rhinoceros by Albrecht Dürer. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
Armon was inspired by rhinoceros hide in the 16th century. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
“This exhibition offers a timely opportunity to reflect on our relationship with the living world and our place within it,” Clos Lucé said in a statement. “The solutions provided by nature to a host of problems allows us to conceive of technology in a paradigm less focused on domination and more on collaboration and harmony.”
As “Biomimicry” shows, Leonardo did the same. To demonstrate a body’s mechanics, he created a suit of armor whose arms moved through a system of gears, pulley, and springs. He later repeated the trick with a lion, one Clos Lucé has recreated and placed alongside its contemporary counterparts including Solo 12, a quadruped, and Romeo, a humanoid robot, both designed by one of France’s national robotics centers.
Plants and insects were inspirations too. His vertical flying machine emerged from a close study of dragonflies, the ring of dandelion seeds provoked his idea for an aerial sphere, and the winged seeds of lime trees fed into his concept for an aerial screw (hence the name helicopter seeds). Today, researchers have followed Leonardo’s lead by developing micro-drones that mimic the body and wingspan of dragonflies, though as was the case in for his flying machines in the 15th century, weight remains a problem.
Installation view of “Biomimicry”. Photo: courtesy Clos Lucé.
Clos Lucé also dips into less direct translations. There’s the avant-garde bird-inspired dresses of Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, a research base designed to drift with ocean currents that mimics the skeleton of a seahorse, and the biomechanical sculptures of François Delarozière. They’re proof that art, as well as science, can find an eternal source in nature.
“Biomimicry: Taking Inspiration from Nature” is on view at the Château du Clos Lucé, 2, rue du Clos Lucé 37400, Amboise, Val de Loire, France, June 7–September 10, 2025. More

In the 1920s and 1930s, monumental grottoes sprang up along the roadsides of the American Midwest, becoming a folk-art phenomenon. These outdoor sculptural marvels were colorful and dazzling, made of concrete embellished with a head-spinning array of materials, including seashells, broken perfume bottles, reflectors, marbles, colored glass, and geodes. These assemblages became popular ways for attracting visitors to the grounds of Catholic churches throughout the region—but they also cropped up on the front lawns of everyday people.
Midwest grottoes, as they are known today, were many things at once: pilgrimage site, folk art, immigrant invention, patriotic expression, roadside attraction, and celebration of local geology. For over a century, these regional grottoes have inspired artists and the faithful who visit these places of communal prayer, care, and creativity.
This kaleidoscopic, ornate and long-overlooked art form is now having a major moment of reconsideration, thanks to a fascinating new exhibition entitled “A Beautiful Experience: The Midwest Grotto Tradition” at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, WI (on view through May 10, 2026).
Madeline Buol, untitled (Seven Sorrows of Mary) (ca. 1948). John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection, gift of Robert and Lisa Klauer and Kohler Foundation Inc. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
“The grotto and the grotto aesthetic are really important to a ton of artists in our collection,” said Laura Bickford, collections curator at JMKAC, who curated the exhibition along with assistant curator Chava Krivchenia. JMKAC is the only institution in the world focused on the preservation of artist-built environments, which are often large-scale and outdoors. “These grottoes are an essential starting point aesthetically, culturally, and philosophically.”
The eye-opening exhibition brings together a grotto by Madeline Buol, one of the only women working in the tradition, rosettes (which are smaller fragments) from important grotto sites, along with ephemera, along with contemporary responses to the grotto tradition by artists E. Saffronia Downing and Stephanie H. Shih.
Religious Roadside Attractions
Grottoes have roots in European pagan traditions going back centuries. “They were based around natural landscapes like caves or reflective pools, which were places for prayer or reflection,” explained Krivchenia.
Over time, however, people began to bring objects with religious or spiritual significance to these spaces, creating shrines, frequented by visitors for moments of prayer. These shrines ultimately became a common aspect of Catholic tradition.
Midwest grottoes emerged in communities of German Catholic immigrants. “These immigrants included those hoping to become pastors, too, as there was a seminary right outside of Milwaukee,” Krivchenia explained.
Father Mathias H. Wernerus, Holy Ghost Park (the Dickeyville Grotto), Dickeyville, WI, ca. 1920–1931. Photo: John Michael Kohler Arts Center Artist Archives.
Priests often spearheaded these Midwest grottoes with support from their community, and “A Beautiful Experience” includes rosettes and ephemera from several of such locations. One of the earliest and most influential grottoes in the Midwest was the vision of Paul Dobberstein, a German immigrant to Milwaukee, who enrolled at the city’s St. Francis Seminary in the 1890s.
After recovering from a bad case of pneumonia, the priest pledged to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary. He began assembling rocks and boulders at his parish. Dobberstein and numerous volunteers together constructed the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa. Reaching back to European traditions in which grottoes were often adorned with shells and rocks, Dobberstein’s brings together a massive array of semiprecious stones and minerals, including petrified wood, malachite, azurite, agates, geodes, jasper, quartz, topaz, calcite, stalactites, and stalagmites. It sprawls over acres, making the largest-known grotto of its kind.
“These grottos are interesting from a material culture perspective and also geology. There are a lot of locally occurring stones that are specific to Midwest geology and time and glacial activity,” Krivchenia added.
Father Mathias H. Wernerus, Holy Ghost Park (the Dickeyville Grotto), Dickeyville, WI ca. 1920–1931. Photo: John Michael Kohler Arts Center Artist Archives.
Dobberstein’s sprawling grotto inspired a flurry of grotto-making across the region in its wake. In Dickeyville, WI, a priest by the name of Father Mathias Wernerus was instrumental in the construction of the Dickeyville Grotto and Shrines between 1924 and 1930. While Dobberstein’s grotto centered on organic materials, the Dickeyville Grotto is a testament to the industry of the region, and includes car reflectors, broken porcelain heirlooms, materials gifted by parishioners, and a bevy of gearshift knobs donated by Henry Ford to the shrine. The Dickeyville Grotto also embodies the unique blending of patriotism and religion that the grottoes unified. Two columns, one on either side of the grotto’s entrance, bear the words “Religion” and “Patriotism” along with a mosaic of an American flag.
“These grottoes are rooted in religious tradition, so you see imagery that has to do with the Stations of the Cross or biblical stories,” said Krivchenia “But, at the same time, German immigrants and Catholics were trying to show that they could have loyalty and commitment to the Church as well as to the U.S. at a time when that was questioned.”
The title for the exhibition “A Beautiful Experience” comes from a brochure advertising the Dickeyville Grotto, as well. While the Catholic diocese sanctioned the construction of the grotto, the funding and maintenance costs had to be self-funded. Much of that came from donations from roadside visitors in an era when interstate highways were a new and exciting development. “Building these grottoes coincided with the rise of the automobile and highways and this idea of taking a road trip, as well as the widespread availability of concrete,” explained Krivchenia.
A Woman in the Spotlight
Anchoring the exhibition is the work of Madeline Buol, one of the few known women builders in the Midwest grotto tradition. “A Beautiful Experience” marks the first-ever public presentation of her monumental 13-piece grotto made at her home in Dubuque, Iowa.
The artist, who was born in 1902, was a devout Catholic who ran a beauty and barber shop with her husband Frank in Dubuque, Iowa. Inspired by other grottoes in the Upper Midwest, she began building a grotto in her yard in 1946, which she worked on, in various capacities, for 15 years. After her death, Buol’s grotto was acquired by JMKAC, which conducted extensive conservation on her works.
Madeline Buol in 1952. Courtesy of the John Michael Kohler Art Center.
“We know that Buol visited both the Dickeyville Grotto and the Grotto Redemption in Iowa, and was really inspired by these acts of faith,” said Krivchenia.
“Buol was not a recognized artist nor working among other women grotto builders, yet she dedicated years to creating monumental works in her own yard,” added Bickford.
Buol’s grotto sculptures range from two feet to over eight feet tall and combine both industrial and organic materials in a unique synthesis. Her works nod to the Dickeyville Grotto, including a smaller replication of the Dickeyville Grotto’s patriotic entrance. Her grotto also includes sculptural forms in the shape of rosary beads.
“A Beautiful Experience” offers a look inside Buol’s unique artistic approaches and reflects decorative trends as well as her own life and home.
“Madeline Buol wrote to the Fathers at the other grottoes for material and technical advice. We know through writing and her autobiography that she went through trial-and-error processes,” said Krivchenia. “The fact that these are in as good a condition as they are, after spending multiple decades in Midwestern winters shows the ingenuity and technique that she was able to cultivate.”
Madeline Buol, untitled (center grotto), ca. 1948; concrete, stones (including quartz, granite, and metamorphic and igneous rocks from glacial outwash), marbles, shells, glass, ceramic, metal, and plastic. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection, gift of Robert and Lisa Klauer and Kohler Foundation Inc. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
While JKMAC focuses on the conservation of such artist-built environments, here the institution is careful to present the work so that the techniques Buol experimented with are more visible, including areas where she added shells as supports in the concrete, as well as baking tins she used to create small additions during the cold winter months.
“What I appreciate the most about her work is that you’re always noticing these moments of care and humor,” said Krivchenia. “She had a huge affinity for seashells. Throughout her sculptures, you’ll notice shells with holes in them. In the Midwest, there was a button factory that would punch out the buttons from shells and then throw the rest of the shells back in the river. So it’s just one of those moments where you’re seeing industrial design or household kind of trends and histories alongside this individual style and aesthetics.”
Stephanie H. Shih, Toy Building (1915–1939), 2025; mixed media. Courtesy of the artist. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
The exhibition also features works by contemporary artists E. Saffronia Downing and Stephanie H. Shih inspired by Midwest grottoes. Shih has created an elaborate porcelain grotto based on the Toy Building, a pagoda-style building that stood in downtown Milwaukee from 1913 to 1939, and housed a buffet, a billiards hall, and more. The building was a testament to a now-vanished Chinese immigrant population in the city. In conceptualizing the work, the artist crowdsourced tchotchkes relating to the Chinese diaspora from the public; these now adorn the building’s roof and serve as an imaginary grotto for these unknown immigrants. Downing, meanwhile, looks at grottoes through the specificity of the Midwestern geology, through sourcing clay and material from the region to create her sculptures, and offering deeper insights into the natural history of the region.
The curators see a lasting and continually important role for grottoes over a hundred years after the folk art first emerged in the Midwest. “The creation of grottoes is a way of place-making and creating a space for community to come together for reflection and belonging,” said Krivchenia, “but also to experience some kind of awe.” More