On View

What does it mean to be an “American artist”? There are museums, galleries, and whole programs of study dedicated to the genre, but as with everything that seems black and white at first, it’s not so simple.
For the artist Raúl de Nieves, born in Michoacán, Mexico, the question of what it means to be American came to the fore of his mind in 2017, when he was preparing a major installation for that year’s Whitney Biennial. “Essentially, I’m showing in ‘the museum of American art’ and I’m from Mexican descent, but, you know, what does that mean today?” he asked in a 2017 interview with Art21. 
De Nieves came to the U.S. at nine years old with no warning and no suitcase. Today, his artwork—which encompasses densely adorned sculpture, installation, and performance—melds the two worlds in which he was raised. Many of his materials, colors, and forms fuse the aesthetics of traditional Mexican craft, queer club culture, and religious iconography.
Sculptures and stained-glass window by Raúl de Nieves. Photo: Henri Neuendorf.
For the Whitney Biennial, de Nieves created a room-engulfing stained-glass mural that traces an individual’s evolution from struggle and self-doubt to celebration. “The mural talks about this experience—this journey,” the artist said. “I feel really happy that I could put so much emphasis on this idea of ‘a better tomorrow’ in my artwork.”
De Nieves’s latest exhibition, on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (through June 24, 2022), is in many ways an extension of the themes he explored in the Whitney Biennial project. “The Treasure House of Memory” includes a collage of tarot-inspired drawings, a painting of the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, and a series of beaded sculptures that trace the evolution of a human figure into a horse.
“Growing up in Mexico was really magical because I got to see a lot of forms of celebration,” the artist, whose father died at the young age of 33, told Art21. “I got to experience death as a really young child. That’s what my work is about: it’s like seeing the facets of happiness and sadness all in one place.”
This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org. More

A forthcoming film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, is reviving the reputation of a popular illustrator known for depictions of cats that captivated Victorian England—and the psychiatric hospital in southeast England where he spent his later days has mounted an exhibition of his work to coincide with the film’s release.
The eccentric artist’s feline fascinations are on view in “Animal Therapy: The Cats of Louis Wain” at Bethlem Museum of the Mind, which is housed within Bethlem Royal Hospital, the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, in southeast England. The institution was a pioneer in recognizing the potential of animal therapy for its patients’ well-being.
Wain’s drawings were immensely popular a century ago, appearing in newspapers and children’s books as well as on greeting cards. When his mental health declined in old age, he was admitted to Springfield Hospital; so loyal was his following that when the public learned about his situation, he was moved to the “more salubrious” surroundings of Bethlem (as the hospital describes them), where he continued to draw and paint. The exhibition draws works from the museum’s holdings, as well as loans from a private collector.
“Animals have always been known for their affinity to man,” said Kate McCormack, the hospital’s senior dramatherapist, in the press release (which, uncharacteristic of announcements of museum shows, pronounces it “a gleeful new exhibition”). “At the Bethlem Royal Hospital, the Pets as Therapy program has helped forge relationships between service-users and dogs, notably a Siberian husky named Tess. From offering unconditional affection to aiding in confronting fears and phobias, pets can be a big part of a person’s recovery and journey to improved mental health. Animals can offer a very pure and unconditional relationship without demands or expectations.”

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The film treatment of the artist’s life, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, directed by Will Sharpe, co-starring Claire Foy as Wain’s wife, Emily Richardson, and with voiceover by Olivia Colman, opens on New Year’s Day. The New York Times dubs the film “the cat’s meow,” describing Cumberbatch as “irresistible” and the script as “garrulous [and] lightly funny,” concluding that the film draws “a deeply human self-portrait.”
See Wain’s work and a film still here.
Louis Wain, Cats’ Christmas (ca. 1935). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, Carol Singing Cats (ca. 1930). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, I Am Happy Because Everybody Loves Me (ca. 1928). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, Sweetness Coyed Love Into its Smile (ca. 1935). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Louis Wain, Kaleidoscope Cats VI (undated). Courtesy Bethlem Museum of the Mind.
Still from The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy. Courtesy Studio Canal.
“Animal Therapy: The Cats of Louis Wain” is on view at Bethlem Museum of the Mind through April 13, 2022.
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The Midwest, like all geographic regions, is both a place and an idea. The phrase might conjure a set of symbols as much as it does a description of physical boundaries: a casserole, a cornfield, a chicken coop. 
In organizing “The Regional,” the first multi-museum survey of contemporary Midwestern artists now on view through March 20, 2022, at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, curators Amara Antilla and Jade Powers avoided all these and any other preconceived notions about the region or its artists. “We made a point not to go into this with a curatorial thesis or an overarching idea or set of themes in mind,” said Antilla, a senior curator at the CAC. 
Instead, they decided, the shape of the show would rest entirely in the hands of its 23 artists, including Matthew Angelo Harrison, Devan Shimoyama, and Nikki Woods, among others. (Altogether, 14 different cities and 10 states are represented.)
Hellen Ascoli, Touch Over Fear (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala City.
Early on in the process, the artists, along with the curators, all got together over Zoom for a group discussion. “It was an opportunity to talk about your practice, to think through how your work is related to someone else’s work who might be several states over,” said Powers, assistant curator at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, where the exhibition will travel in June of next year. She called the conversations “potent and generative.”
Sure enough, it was there that the identity of “The Regional” really took hold, as the artists, who were initially bound together only by location, identified myriad common concerns. 
Margo Wolowiec, Breaking News (2018). Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.
Land use, geographical borders, and the environment are major interests among the group, particularly for artists like Detroit’s Margo Wolowiec, who here turns both original and found photographs of contaminated waters into woven collages both dense and fragile; and Hellen Ascoli, a Guatemalan artist previously based in Madison, Wis., whose own patchwork textiles refer to the immigration crisis. 
Ascoli’s efforts speak to another key theme as well: the immigrant experience. It’s overt in the work of Minnesota-based photographer Pao Houa Her, for instance, whose series Coming Off the Metal Bird (2006–09) comprises pictures of her Hmong community adjusting to life in America. “Instead of a narrative, [the project] was more about my own opinions and answering questions about life in America and what America is,” the artist explains in the exhibition’s digital catalogue.
Meanwhile, for his part, the ceramist Jonathan Christensen Caballero, based in Lawrence, Kan., offers up an allegorical sculpture. Spanning more than 13 feet, it depicts two relatives on either side of a river sailing small boats toward one another, as if communicating across borders of both time and place.
Pao Houa Her, Aunty Mai’s 3 daughters (2006–09). Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis.
Antilla and Powers may have approached “The Regional” without a thematic conceit, but they weren’t without goals. In their joint essay for the catalogue, their aims were framed in the form of questions: “How might we support a regional conversation and prop up local artists?” they wrote. “How might we foster conversations between our cities and the many other vibrant hubs throughout the Midwest? What are the values of living and working outside of conventional ‘art hubs,’ financial and otherwise?” 
In each case, the answers came back to a sense of community—something in which artists throughout the Midwest are particularly invested, the curators explained.
“It was exciting to hear how interested these artists were in making those connections and getting to know other artists throughout the region,” said Antilla. 
“Even though they are not on either coast, there is still a strong sense of community and artistic conversation,” Powers added. “There’s a real vibrancy in the Midwest art scene that maybe isn’t always recognized.”
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“Got to hurry on back to my hotel room where I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece,” Bob Dylan sang in 1971. “She promised that she’d be right there with me when I paint my masterpiece.”
It’s unclear if the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter ever got around to that masterpiece, but if he did, it’s almost certainly on view now in “Retrospectrum,” a survey of Dylan’s artistic output from the late 1960s through to today, which opened last month at Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum in Miami.
More than 180 paintings, drawings, and sculptures make up the show, much of which has never been seen by the public before. And that’s what makes the show special: The artist is one of the most famous humans on the planet, but its offerings will be largely new to audiences, especially in the U.S. The show marks the first time the artworks have been shown together stateside. (A previous version of the show was held at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2019.)
Bob Dylan, Rainy Night in Grand Forks (2021). Courtesy of the artist.
“Seeing many of my works years after I completed them is a fascinating experience,” Dylan said in a statement about the retrospective (a straightforward reflection from a man who, now in his sixth decade of making idiosyncratic music and art, rarely offers them). 
The insight gets even more Dylanesque from there: “I don’t really associate them with any particular time or place or state of mind, but view them as part of a long arc; a continuing of the way we go forth in the world and the way our perceptions are shaped and altered by life. One can be as profoundly influenced by events in Morretes, Brazil, as they can be by the man who sells El País in Madrid.” 
Much like his music, Dylan’s visual oeuvre spans a broad swath of styles and genres. But whereas his nasal voice would give away even the most out-there tune as a Dylan original, no such clue connects his artwork. From painted depictions of cramped urban cityscapes (think Edward Hopper) and yawning Western vistas, to a series of sculptural gates made from welding together a hodgepodge of metal materials, they don’t necessarily seem to be from one man’s hand.
Bob Dylan, Night Time in St. Louis (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
“I think what distinguishes Dylan as a songwriter is his willingness to take disparate literary and musical strains and incorporate them into his unique vision. You can see the same kind of open-mindedness and willingness to experiment in Dylan’s visual work,” the exhibition’s curator, Shai Baitel, told ARTnews last month. (Baitel is the artistic director of the Modern Art Museum Shanghai and organized Dylan’s 2019 show there.) 
“I am convinced that creativity, no matter in which field or context, comes from the same deep place within us,” she went on. “And the difference in its articulation through different art forms only serves to deepen our understanding of that creativity.”
Also on display is Dylan’s newest body of work, a series of paintings inspired by famous movie scenes called Deep Focus. 
“All these images come from films,” the artist explained. “They try to highlight the different predicaments that people find themselves in. Whether it’s James Cagney or Margaret Rutherford, the dreams and schemes are the same—life as it’s coming at you in all its forms and shapes.”
Bob Dylan, Abandoned Motel, Eureka (2015–16). Courtesy of the artist.
“Retrospectrum: Bob Dylan” is on view now through April 22, 2022 at the Frost Art Museum in Miami.
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During Miami Art Week (November 29–December 5), there will be plenty more to see beyond the Miami Beach Convention Center, the Ice Palace, and the beachside tents. As the city’s museums, nonprofits, private collections, and galleries return to form after the off year of 2020, they have saved some of their best programming for December, when they can seize the international art world’s attention. Read on for our picks.

“There Is Always One Direction” 
 de la Cruz CollectionOngoing through 2022
Installation view of “There Is Always One Direction” at the de la Cruz Collection. Photo courtesy of the de la Cruz Collection, Miami.
Since 2009, collectors Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz have operated a private museum that showcases new selections from their holdings each year. The current outing takes its name from Gabriel Orozco’s sculpture Four Bicycles (There Is Always One Direction) (1994), which is on view alongside works by the likes of Tauba Auerbach, Hernan Bas, Wifredo Lam, Glenn Ligon, Christina Quarles, Sterling Ruby, Vaughn Spann, Reena Spaulings, and Christopher Wool.
The de la Cruz collection is located at 23 NE 41st Street in the Miami Design District. Admission is free.

“Will Ryman: The Situation Room, 2014” 
Margulies WarehouseThrough April 30, 2022
Will Ryman, The Situation Room (2014). Photo courtesy of the Margulies Warehouse, Miami.
Mega-collector Martin Z. Margulies is staging no fewer than seven shows at his private museum this year, including ones dedicated to Arte Povera, new work by Anselm Kiefer, and Will Ryman’s life-size replica, in glittering black charcoal, of President Obama and his security council in the titular situation room during the covert Navy Seal operation that assassinated Taliban leader Osama bin Laden.
The Margulies Warehouse is located at 591 NW 27th Street. General admission is $10.

“Zhivago Duncan: Pretentious Crap”
Pérez Art Museum MiamiNovember 30, 2021–September 25, 2022
Zhivago Duncan, Pretentious Crap (2010–11). Collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Diane and Robert Moss.
In addition to current shows by Jed Novatt, Meleko Mokgosi, and Marco Brambilla, and of African and African diaspora artists from the Jorge M. Pérez collection, PAMM is staging an installation of Zhivago Duncan’s elaborate multimedia work Pretentious Crap (2010–11), which Diane and Robert Moss donated to the museum in 2014. The piece is by the artist’s alter ego Dick Flash, the sole survivor of a global apocalypse who has forgotten life before the end of the world, collecting scraps from a ruined civilization he doesn’t understand. The resulting display, with vehicle parts spinning aimlessly in a massive cabinet, parallels contemporary artists’ struggles to make work that explains our complex world.
PAMM is located at 1103 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami. General admission is $16.

“Shattered Glass”
Presented by Jeffrey Deitch at the Moore BuildingNovember 29–December 5, 2021
Delfin Finley, Two Sides of the Same Coin (2021). Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch.
After five years of teaming up with Larry Gagosian to bring blue-chip art to the Design District’s Moore Building, Jeffrey Deitch is going it alone this year with “Shattered Glass.” He’s re-staging a show of new art by emerging artists of color that debuted at his Los Angeles space back in the spring, which attracted more than 1,000 daily visitors in its final weeks. Curators Melahn Frierson and AJ Girard are expanding the exhibition to include 15 additional artists. It’s also the last time Deitch will occupy the space because, according to the dealer, its being taken over by a “concept creation collaborative” called Woodhouse.
The Moore Building is located at 191 NE 40th Street, Miami Design District, Miami. Admission is free.

“Witness: Afro Perspectives”
El Espacio 23Through Winter 2021
“Witness: Afro Perspectives” at El Espacio 23. Photo courtesy of of El Espacio 23, Miami.
PAMM namesake Jorge M. Pérez opened his own private art space in Allapattah, the Dominican neighborhood that is also home to the new Rubell Museum. The second show, of over 100 works by African and African Diaspora artists, is guest-curated by Tandazani Dhlakama, of Cape Town’s Zeitz MOCA, in collaboration with Pérez Collection curators Patricia M. Hanna and Anelys Alvarez. Featured artists include Belkis Ayón, Lorna Simpson, and Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, tackling weighty themes such as systemic oppression and identity. A companion show, “Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection,” is also on view at PAMM (through February 2, 2022).
El Espacio 23–Jorge M. Pérez Collection is located at 2270 Northwest 23rd Street, Allapattah, Miami. Admission is free.

“Ellen Lesperance: Amazonknights” 
ICA MiamiNovember 30, 2021–March 27, 2022
Ellen Lesperance, Amazonknights. Womonspirit. Womonpower. Glory. (2017). Collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; museum purchase with funds from Helen Kent-Nicoll and Edward J. Nicoll. Photo: Dan Kvitka.
In addition to “Betye Saar: Serious Moonlight,” which opened in late October and runs through April 17, 2022, the ICA is unveiling a quintet of solo presentations by Ellen Lesperance, Shuvinai Ashoona, Harold Mendez, Hugh Hayden, and Anthea Hamilton during Miami Art Week. Inspired by the women weavers of the Bauhaus, the Pattern and Decoration movement, and 1970s and ’80s feminist art, Lesperance has made paintings and sculptures based on hand-knitted garments worn by women activists who took part in the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp protests against nuclear weapons in Berkshire, England, between 1980 and 2000.
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami is located at 61 NE 41st Street, Miami Design District. Admission is free.

“Alex Israel x Snapchat”
Bass Museum of ArtNovember 29, 2021–May 1, 2022
Alex Israel, Self-Portrait (Pelican with Fish) (2019). Courtesy of the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach.
Alex Israel’s collaboration with Snap, which debuted at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2019, uses augmented-reality technology to create five AR experiences that each correspond to one of his “Self-Portraits.” At the museum, viewers can take in the physical paintings with their eyes, and then download the AR “lenses” to view the work though their smartphone, watching as the works come to life. A sixth AR work activates the museum’s Art Deco facade, transforming the entire building into a pedestal for a giant virtual sculpture of Israel himself.
The Bass Museum of Art is located at 2100 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach. General admission is $10.

“My Name Is Maryan”
MOCA North MiamiThrough March 20, 2022
Maryan, Personnage (Soldat), 1974. Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami.
Polish-born artist Maryan was a survivor of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, where he sustained injuries that necessitated the amputation of his leg. After the war, he studied to become an artist in Jerusalem and Paris before moving to New York in the 1960s. His paintings, sculptures, drawings, and films often feature fictional figures he called his personnages, from the French word for character. This exhibition surveying his four-decade career, curated by Alison Gingeras, opens with an installation that re-creates Maryam’s studio at New York’s Chelsea Hotel, where he lived during the 1970s.
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami is located at the Joan Lehman Building, 770 NE 125th Street, North Miami. General admission is $10.

“Reginald O’Neal: As I Am”
Rubell MuseumNovember 29, 2021–October 2022
Reginald O’Neal, Thyself (2020). Courtesy of Spinello Projects, Miami.
At the last proper Miami Art Week, in 2019, the opening of Don and Mera Rubell’s private museum was one of the most hotly anticipated events of the year, putting the city’s Allapattah neighborhood on the art-world map. This year’s offerings are from 2021 artists-in-residence Kennedy Yanko, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Cajsa von Zeipel, and Reginald O’Neal, a figurative painter whose work focuses on the Black experience. The Rubells commissioned two new paintings from the Miami-based artist, and will show them alongside works from his solo debut “At the Feet of Mountains,” held last year at Miami’s Spinello Projects. O’Neal will have a simultaneous show, “They Dreamt of Us,” at the gallery (through January 15.)
The Rubell Museum is located at 1100 NW 23th Street, Miami. Admission is free.

“Every Wall Is a Door”
SuperblueThrough 2022
Es Devlin, Forest of U, (2021). Installation view of “Every Wall is a Door,” Superblue Miami, 2021. Photo: Andrea Mora.
Superblue Miami’s inaugural exhibition—named after stage designer Es Devlin’s immersive mirrored environment of the same name—opened in May, adding even more visual star power to the Allapattah neighborhood. The show also includes one of James Turrell’s light-based Ganzfeld works and Drift’s kinetic installation Meadow, plus a digital experience from TeamLab.
Superblue Miami is located at 1101 Northwest 23rd Street, Miami, Florida. General admission is $36. 

“Bernadette Despujols: I Love You, Man”
Spinello Projects
Through January 15, 2022
Bernadette Despujols, Andres (2021). Courtesy of Spinello Projects.
Bernadette Despujols has previously painted naked women, creating works that confront society’s objectification of the female body. Here she turns her painter’s eye on the closest men in her life, creating intimate portraits of her friends, family, and lovers.
Spinello Projects is located at 2930 NW 7th Avenue, Miami. 

“Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib: Field Companion” 
Locust Projects
Through February 5, 2022
Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, Field Companion, still. Courtesy of Locust Projects, Miami.
Locust Projects, a highly regarded nonprofit alternative art space, reliably hosts some of Miami Art Week’s most interesting offerings. This year, Philadelphia-based artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib have created an immersive film installation of Field Companion, a film loosely inspired by the forests of the New Jersey Pine Barrens but filmed in a terrarium in the artists’ studio. Mirrored walls make it seems as through the microcosmic film set, captured with a motion-controlled camera, stretches into infinity. Fantastical (digitally rendered) creatures inhabit this tiny world, which speaks to issues of coexistence and sustainability, and the the importance of nature.
Locust Projects is located at 3852 North Miami Avenue, Miami. Admission is free.

“Dominga’s Photo Studio” 
Wolfsonian–FIUDecember 1–8, 2021
Photo: Juan Luis Matos. Courtesy of the Wolfsonian FIU, Miami Beach.
It’s not just wealthy art collectors who can leave Miami Art Week with an original piece of art. In exchange for posing for a photographic portrait with Juan Luis Matos during his weeklong residence at the Wolfsonian’s Bridge Tender House, you’ll get a a print of the work. Each portrait’s pose and setting will be inspired by images in the Wolfsonian collection. The project is a collaboration with Bakehouse Art Complex and Miami Beach Open House.
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach. General admission is $12.

“Retrospectrum: Bob Dylan”
Patricia and Phillip Frost Art MuseumNovember 30, 2021–April 17, 2022
Bob Dylan, One Too Many (2020). Private collection. Image courtesy of the artist.
Beloved singer-songwriter and Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan gets his first U.S. retrospective of his work as a visual artist. The show, which originated at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, features more than 180 paintings, drawings, ironwork, and ephemera, and teases out the connections between his material output and his music and lyrics.
The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University is located at 10975 SW 17th Street. Admission is free.

“Margarita Cano: 90 Years”
NSU Art Museum, Fort LauderdaleThrough February 13, 2022
Margarita Cano, The Tumbler (1997). Collection of the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale; gift of Isabel Hernandez in memory of Benjamin Holloway. © 2021 Margarita Cano.
Entirely self-taught, the Cuban-born, Miami-based artist Margarita Cano turned 90 this year. This exhibition celebrates her celestially inspired oeuvre, which includes miniature books, votive portraits, landscapes paintings, prints, and photographs.
Nova Southeastern University Art Museum is located at 1 East Las Olas Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale. General admission is $12.

“Judy Chicago: Judy Chicago In Glass”
Nina JohnsonNovember 30, 2021–January 15, 2022
Judy Chicago, Hand on Fire (Hands—Studies/Ancillaries) (2004). Courtesy of Nina Johnson, Miami.
Pioneering feminist artist Judy Chicago may be notorious for the ceramic plates she made for her massive installation The Dinner Party, but she has also developed her own techniques for painting on kiln-fired glass. Her second show with the Nina Johnson gallery will mark the debut of Mortality in Glass, her largest glass piece to date, as well as works from her glass sculpture series “Head’s Up” and “Hands.” Chicago has also re-fabricated Zig Zag, a Minimalist sculpture originally from 1965, in powder-coated steel.
Nina Johnson is located at 6315 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami. Admission is free. 
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It’s almost impossible to think about San Francisco without thinking about its landscape: the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the 1989 Earthquake. California’s Golden City, a boom-and-bust town with an economy, immigrants, and urban identity so tied to its environment, that the climate itself is a central character in San Francisco’s story. 
It was no surprise then that when For-Site Foundation founding director Cheryl Haines began to consider the next exhibition for the Bay Area-based organization, the climate crisis would be its central query. In the last decade, the city has been plagued by drought and fire, they too becoming local residents in the psyche of San Francisco. But it was when the National Park Service all but tossed Haines the keys to Cliff House, the Victorian-era landmark leisure complex on the Pacific Ocean, that the theme of the new exhibition, titled “Lands End,” really began to take on tones that might otherwise not be there. 

Cliff House, once the gilded getaway of the wealthy and later an overpriced tourist trap and wedding venue, fell prey to the pandemic and shuttered its doors on the last day of 2020. It remained unoccupied until last month, when For-Site opened the show there. It will occupy the space through March, free and open to the public, at which point the National Park Service hopes to have a new tenant.
Haines and her team had about six weeks to pull the exhibition together, and only in early September did they begin to install the works by 26 artists, including Doug Aitken, Andy Goldsworthy, Olafur Eliasson, and Ana Teresa Fernandez.
Despite the urgency and tattered timeline, Haines, who was also behind the 2014 Ai Weiwei show at Alcatraz, felt the exhibition was a necessary endeavor for the foundation: “Because we’re a project-based organization, we disappear in between projects,” she said. “We can’t stay financially viable if we’re quiet for too long.”

It felt uncomfortably ironic that the day I visited “Lands End,” while it was being installed last month, the Bay Area had just been battered by historic rainfall (effectively ending fire season, the other end of the region’s climate crutch). The water-logged fire alarm inside Cliff House wouldn’t stop beeping throughout the hour Haines took me around. (Sounding the alarm? So on the nose it could have served as a piece of art itself.)
Instead, inside the 1960s travel lodge rehabbed into a 1990s corporate structure, you’ll find sculpture, painting, video, and social practice works by an impressive roster of bold-named artists in a complete utilization of all spaces (including the trash room!). It’s evocative and ghostly, as well as quite literally a confrontation of our climate. 
Brian Jungen, Tombstone, (2019). Courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, B.C.
Haines personally installed some of the commissions for artists who weren’t able to travel. Of his Geophagia, an experiment in California Kaolin clay, Goldsworthy said: “I wanted to see if it would be possible for me to make this work from a distance—it’s difficult for an artist for whom place is so important. Cheryl would have to be my hands.”  
The clay is laid over dining tables in the former cafe space, cracking as it dries, and evoking the many themes of California: topography, drought, fault lines, fragile resources, and, as Goldsworthy said, “a reminder that when we dine, we eat earth.” 
Meanwhile, Ana Teresa Fernandez’s site-specific On the Horizon (2021) is a series of six-foot-high plexiglass tubes, filled with ocean water collected in buckets from outside, materializing the projected sea-level rise. 
Ana Teresa Fernández, On the Horizon,(2021). Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.
Andrea Chung offered Sea Change, a cyanotype not made with the climate in mind, but in her interest exploring Caribbean colonial histories. Hung near huge picture windows facing the ocean, Chung’s work echoes ideas of the “reshaping of land because of colonialism. What we know of the Caribbean is all imposed fantasy of trying to create the garden of Eden, and there are consequences to that that people don’t consider in altering the land.“  
Though the exhibition is one of discovery—especially of art in unlikely places—that sparks dialogue about the changing nature of our world, “the artists I select don’t hit you on the head,” Haines said. “They’re not aggressive in their messaging, they’re inviting you to consider, and asking questions more than presenting answers.” 
With a topic as existential, anxiety-provoking, and seemingly insurmountable as climate change, it was important that Haines frame the curation intentionally. “Beauty and seduction of beauty is always a device I’ve used to bring people to big ideas,” she said, “but I’m feeling it more in this show than I have in the past.”
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Less than two months before the fifth edition of Prospect New Orleans was set to commence this past August, Hurricane Ida devastated the Louisiana city. The fate of the triennial—which was already postponed a year by the pandemic—was once again up in the air. 
Looming over the dilemma was a kind of perverse irony. The show’s central theme is about how the cycles of the past shape the present, and Ida no doubt recalled another tropical storm, Hurricane Katrina, from which the inaugural Prospect triennial was born 13 years ago. And so organizers of this year’s event decided to push on, too. 
“It became evident quite quickly that it was important for us to pursue the exhibition,” said Diana Nawi, who curated the show with Naima Keith. As with so many events canceled over the past year and a half, the city’s residents needed a “mark on the calendar.”  
“What we’ve heard over and over again is how excited people are for Prospect to be open right now,” added Keith. 
Diana Nawi and Naima J. Keith, the show’s curators. Courtesy of Prospect New Orleans.
The first slate of Prospect’s 50-plus projects opened last month, with more to come over the following weeks, including new work by artists Dawoud Bey, Dineo Seshee Bopape, and Nari Ward. 
The slowed rollout wasn’t ideal, but the landscape of New Orleans’s venues changed dramatically over the last year. It was one of the many concessions Keith and Nawi were forced to make as they battled an onslaught of logistical obstacles. Travel restrictions limited site and studio visit opportunities, while supply chain shortages challenged the production of certain artworks. The show’s catalogue, meanwhile, was delayed for months at a shipping port. 
“A million compromises were made, but I don’t feel that the show was compromised in the slightest,” said Nawi. “It’s a stronger, better show for everything that has challenged it.”
Most of the show’s participants evolved their contributions over the last year as well, some due to material considerations, others in the name of addressing the current political moment. 
An installation of new work by Dawoud Bey Vistors on view in “Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow.” Photo: Jose Cotto.
Glenn Ligon’s neon sculpture listing the names of toppled confederate statues has been updated with new entries, for instance, while new artworks by Willie Birch and Celeste Dupuy-Spencer reflect the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. (All three artists’ offerings will go on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art this week.)
For her part, Adriana Corral, who had planned to erect an inverted gravestone made of bulletproof glass, decided to reallocate her commission funds, donating the majority to mutual aid in New Orleans. 
“I think the show is a really moving testament to what people are thinking about, what is important here in New Orleans, and how that reflects out to the larger nation and world at this moment,” said Nawi. It’s critical, she went on, “to bring people here and see what culture means, what the stakes of culture are here.”
“Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow” is on view now through January 23 at various locations in New Orleans. 
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The title of this year’s New Museum triennial is “Soft Water Hard Stone.” It’s a moniker that alludes to the natural world, to folk wisdom, and to the kind of quiet, insistent force that makes change over time—the idea being that even something as pliant as a soft current of water, over time, has an effect.
Curated by Margot Norton and Jamillah James, with the assistance of Jeanette Bisschops, the resulting show does indeed land gently. It’s a show of a lot of things that either lay on the ground or look like they were just picked up off the ground, and things that vaguely evoke a ruin. It is all washed-out colors and neutrals and graphite grays. It has a cool emotional tone (though not a cold one).
There are almost no big, central images—it’s a lot of things you have to look at like puzzles, for details. Even the big things and the figurative work feel faceless and diffuse somehow. The mental afterimage the show leaves is of a lot of people standing with their backs to you, talking in low tones.
It offers plenty to think about. As I put together my own thoughts on it, here are some photos of the show, so you can get a taste for yourself.

4th Floor
Cynthia Daignault, As I Lay Dying (2021) and Gabriel Chaile, Mamá Luchona (2021) in the New Museum Triennial. Photo by Ben Davis.
Tanya Lukin Linklater, An Amplification Through Many Minds (2019). Photo by Ben Davis.
Jeneen Frei Njooti, Fighting for the Title Not to Be Pending (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.
Various works by Kang Seung Lee. Photo by Ben Davis.
Nadia Belerique, HOLDINGS (2020-ongoing). Photo by Ben Davis.
Brandon Ndife, Pistachio (2021) and Market Fare (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Brandon Ndife, Pinched (2021) and Ripe Today, Finally (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Two panels from Cynthia Daignault, As I Lay Dying (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
A work by Erin Jane Nelson. Photo by Ben Davis.
Gabriela Mureb, Machine #4: stone (ground) (2017). Photo by Ben Davis.
Alex Ayed, Untitled (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.

Stairway Gallery
Alex Ayed, Untitled (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Gabriela Mureb, Machine #3: belt (small) (2013-21). Photo by Ben Davis.
3rd Floor
Kate Cooper, Somatic Aliasing (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Krista Clark, Annotations on Shelter 5 (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Tomás Díaz Cedeño, 1000 Años (2019). Photo by Ben Davis.
Haig Aivazian, All of Your Stars Are But Dust on My Shoes (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Yu Gi, Flesh in Stone Ghost #8 (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Krista Clark, Annotations on Shelter #3 (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Ambera Wellman, Strobe (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Laurie Kang, Great Shuttle (2020-21) and Root 2020-21). Photo by Ben Davis.
Jes Fan, Networks (for Rupture) (2021) and Networks (for Extension) (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Iris Touliatou, Untitled (Still Not Over You) (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Harry Gould Harvey IV (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Sandra Mujinga, Pervasive Light (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.

2nd Floor
Three works by Goutam Ghosh. Photo by Ben Davis.
Bronwyn Katz, Xãe (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Angelica Loderer, Untitled (ribbons) (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Alex Ayed, Untitled (Sail II) (2020) and Untitled (Sail IV) (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.
Ima-Abasi Okon, Put Something in the Air: The E-s-s-e-n-t-i-a-l Mahalia Jackson Blowing Up DJ Pollie Pop’s Chopped and Screwed Rendition of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries — Military-Entertainment Complex Dub [Jericho Speak Life!]*(Free of Legacy)* (2017). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Ann Greene Kelly. Photo by Ben Davis.
Blair Saxon-Hill, Emergency Contact (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Christina Pataialii, Footsteps in the Dark (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Kahlil Robert Irving, Routes&Roots[(SaintLouis NewYork (returnflight)] MEMORY MASSES (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Ann Greene Kelly. Photo by Ben Davis.
Wallpaper and various untitled works by Evgeny Antufiev and [foreground] Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Nothing further beyond (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Works by Evgeny Antufiev. Photo by Ben Davis.
Foreground: Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Nothing further beyond (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Rose Salane, 60 Detected Rings (1991-2021) (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Amalie Smith, Clay Theory (2019). Photo by Ben Davis.
Gaëlle Choisne, Temple of Love—Love to love (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Lobby Gallery
Arturo Kameya, Who can afford to feed the ghosts (2021). Photo by Ben Davis.
Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho, waves move bile (2020). Photo by Ben Davis.
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