On View

Yoko Ono is bringing her famed Wish Tree to the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.—but with a virtual twist for the age of social distancing.
The interactive artwork typically allows viewers to write their wishes for the future of humanity on small slips of paper and hang them from the branches of trees planted by the Japanese artist in places around the world.
In 2007, Ono gifted a dogwood tree, titled Wish Tree for Washington, D.C., to the Hirshhorn, and it “blooms” with museum goers’ wishes each summer. (The rest of the year, Ono asks that you whisper your wish to the tree.)
This year, art lovers are invited to share photographs of their handwritten wishes with the museum via Instagram under the hashtags #WishTreeDC and #YokoOno. Hirshhorn staff will then transfer as many wishes as possible to paper tags, sharing photographs of the installation on social media as it grows.
As always, the wishes will be harvested at the end of the season, and buried on Videy Island in Iceland, at the foot of Ono’s installation Imagine Peace Tower, a memorial dedicated to her late husband, John Lennon.
Yoko Ono, Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007), installed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Photo by Andy DelGiudice.
“We are honored to partner with Yoko Ono to share her timeless message of peace,” Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu said in a statement. “The past year has challenged the Hirshhorn to translate the power of artworks including Wish Tree for Washington, D.C. for online audiences… . We’ll continue to invite global audiences to connect through modern art in meaningful ways until we can be together in person once again.”
The museum has also created instructions for making your own Wish Tree at home. To date, the Hirshhorn has collected over 100,000 wishes for the project, which has had more than a million participants worldwide.
See some of the wishes submitted to this year’s Wish Tree at the Hirshhorn below.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Written on Japanese rice paper, it reads, “Peace and mind (or heart),” with two stamps by the artist. Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Ugo Rondinone’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Ken Lum’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Byron Kim’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Liz Larner’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Sarah Anne Johnsons’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
Michelle Stuart’s wish for Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007). Photo courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian.
“Yoko Ono: Wish Tree for Washington, DC” will be on view virtually and in person at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Independence Ave SW &, 7th St SW, in Washington, D.C., April 15–31, 2021.
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The UK’s long winter lockdown is finally being eased.
From April 12, galleries and other businesses deemed “non-essential” (huff!) have been permitted to reopen their doors. By now, London is well-versed in the art of reopening. Most galleries require visitors to book ahead, and social distancing, mandatory mask-wearing, and crowd-control measures will be in place to keep the public safe.
Alas, visitors will have to wait until May 19 to return to museums. In the meantime, here are nine gallery shows we are looking forward to seeing.

“Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees, and Faces”Hauser & WirthThrough May 1
Charles Gaines’s show at Hauser & Wirth in London. Photo by Alex Delfanne. ©Charles Gaines Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
For his first solo exhibition in the UK, conceptual artist Charles Gaines (who we spoke to earlier this year) is presenting two new bodies of Plexiglas gridworks at Hauser & Wirth. His “Numbers and Trees” works continue a series Gaines began in 1986, and “Numbers and Faces,” a set of new pictures, plot and overlay gridded portraits of people who identify as multiracial.
“Charles Gaines: Multiples of Nature, Trees, and Faces,” Hauser & Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London

“Ryan Driscoll: Holst”Soft OpeningApril 14 through May 22
Ryan Driscoll, Uranus(2020). Courtesy the artist and Soft Opening, London. Photography Theo Christelis.
Ryan Driscoll has created a series of oil-on-wood paintings responding to the English composer Gustav Holst’s early 20th-century seven-movement orchestral suite, “The Planets.” Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the solar system and its corresponding astrological character. Rendered as enigmatic and romantic characters or landscapes, Driscoll’s interpretations are infused with queer sensuality and androgyny, giving a refreshing injection of queer energy into classical subjects.
“Ryan Driscoll: Holst,” Soft Opening, 6 Minerva Street, London

“Sam McKinniss: Country Western”Almine RechApril 15 through May 22
Sam McKinniss, Dolly Parton with kitten (2021). © Sam McKinniss. Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech. Photo: Dan Bradica.
The US artist Sam McKinniss is showing new paintings of celebrity subjects, honing in on the world of popular country music. Included are portraits of Shania Twain, Tammy Wynette, and a picture of Dolly Parton cuddling a kitten. “It seems like the entire planet loves Parton, which terrifies me,” the artist writes. “What scares me is the enormous task of entertaining so many people, while also taking on the unilateral scrutiny of worldwide love or obsession.”
“Sam McKinniss: Country Western,” Almine Rech, Broadbent House, London

“Ed Fornieles: Associations”Carlos/IshikawaApril 17 Through May 22
An image from Ed Fornieles’s show, “Associations.” Courtesy Carlos/ Ishikawa.
Ed Fornieles used internet search tools to create this new series, which knits together images based on formal and conceptual associations. The artist likens the trance-like mental state required for his process to the “flow state” social media companies aim to create to keep users hooked and suggestible. The presentation probes the mysteries of the psyche and individual and collective subjectivities, and will probably resonate with you if you’ve accidentally spent untold hours buried in TikTok scroll holes during lockdown.
“Ed Fornieles: Associations,” Carlos/Ishikawa, Unit 4, 88 Mile End Road, London

“Sanya Kantarovsky & Camille Blatrix: Will-o’-the-wisp”Modern ArtApril 23 through May 22
Hermann Hendrich, The Will o’ the Wisp and the Snake (1823).
While visiting Japan a few years ago, Sanya Kantarovsky developed an edition of traditional Ukiyo-e woodblock prints together with the Adachi Hanga Institute of Printmaking, and Camille Blatrix has created Corian frames embedded with handcrafted wood marquetry pieces responding to the prints they encase.
“Sanya Kantarovsky & Camille Blatrix: Will-o’-the-wisp,” Modern Art, 7 Bury Street, London

“Allez La France!”Saatchi YatesThrough May 26
Paintings by Mathieu Julien, Jin Angdoo, Kevin Pinsembert and Hams Klemens at Saatchi Yates Gallery. Image courtesy of Saatchi Yates © Justin Piperger, 2021.
A collective of emerging French artists has come together for “Allez La France!” the second exhibition at the new Cork Street space run by Phoebe Saatchi Yates and her husband Arthur Yates. The show brings together Hams Klemens, Jin Angdoo, Mathieu Julien, and Kevin Pinsembert, who are used to creating work in the streets of Paris and Marseille, rather than on large-scale canvases at a tony Mayfair gallery. The gallerists say they wanted to highlight the work’s resonance with Abstract Expressionism, and its departure from typical French street art.
“Allez la France!” Saatchi Yates, 6 Cork Street, London

“Agnès V. par Jenna G”Sim SmithMay 1 through May 29
Jenna Gribbon, You want me to pose nude (2021). Courtesy Sim Smith.
The US painter Jenna Gribbon has taken inspiration from the late French artist and director Agnès Varda’s 1988 portrait of Jane Birkin (Jane B. par Agnès V) for her latest solo outing at Sim Smith. The artist has played on Varda’s habits of inserting documentary moments into fictional films, and has made a series of figurative paintings of her friends gathered together to watch Varda’s films projected onto the wall.
“Agnès V. par Jenna G,” Sim Smith, 30 Old Burlington Street, London

“An Infinity of Traces”Lisson GalleryThrough June 5
“An Infinity of Traces” at Lisson Gallery, London. © The artists, courtesy Lisson Gallery.
This group exhibition curated by Ekow Eshun spotlights 11 Black artists based in the UK whose work probes questions of race, history, being, and belonging. Featuring artists Ayo Akingbade, Ufuoma Essi, Liz Gre, and others, the show reflects on the Black Lives Matter protests and their relation to the nation’s imperial history. The show also includes an online component developed by the participating artists.
“Infinity of Traces,” Lisson Gallery, 27 Bell Street, London.

“Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects” at GagosianThrough June 6
“Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects,” installation view, 2021. © Rachel Whiteread. Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates, courtesy Gagosian.
In her latest show, Whiteread presents new works created during lockdown, including two halting sculptures that revisit her early plaster cast rooms. Called Poltergeist and Doppelgänger, the haunting cabin-like structures have been constructed from found wood and metal painted ghostly white (rather than cast in her usual process) and evoke catastrophic events like natural disasters, or perhaps the frustrations of a lockdown that went on a little too long.
“Rachel Whiteread: Internal Objects,” Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London
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After a year spent largely inside, New Yorkers have a joyful gift awaiting them at the New York Botanical Garden. The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored orbs, bold polka dots, and signature pumpkins are being unveiled after a year’s delay amid the seasonal rebirth that is early spring, surrounded by blossoming daffodils and cherry trees.
“People are just itching to be outdoors and to see something cultural again,” Nicholas Lechi, the garden’s senior director of communications, told Artnet News.
The exhibition, “Kusama: Cosmic Infinity,” functions as a celebratory reminder that despite the struggles of the past year—and rightly maligned editorials to the contrary—this city is still here, and still has so much to offer. After the long, dark winter, it’s not only the art show we need, but the art show we deserve.
Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden (1966/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Unlike her wildly popular museum exhibitions, where visitors queue for hours for the chance to spend 30 seconds inside one of Kusama’s mirrored “infinity rooms,” most of the art here can be experienced outdoors without long lines, making it ideal for the age of social distancing.
“It’s a refreshing experience since we don’t normally see art that way. You go from one gallery to the next,” curator Mika Yoshitake said at the exhibition’s press preview. “Kusama’s work really enhances the botanical landscape.”
Yayoi Kusama, Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
The setting is a fitting one for the artist, who grew up in a seed nursery, and for whom flowers are a recurring motif.
“There’s a very visceral connection to nature that you see in her forms,” Yoshitake said.
Yayoi Kusama around age 10. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The garden was forced to pare back on its indoor exhibition plans because of the pandemic, so only the first floor library space is in use, showcasing a limited selection of paintings and sculptures.
But there’s plenty to see outdoors. Greeting visitors at the entrance fountain is the smiling sun sculpture I Want to Fly to the Universe (2020), while the fabric-wrapped trees of Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees (2002/2021) line the path in front of the library.
Yayoi Kusama in Flower Obsession. Photo by Yuzuke Miyazake ©Yayoi Kusama 2021.
Outside the conservatory stands the monumental Dancing Pumpkin (2020), a bronze sculpture that combines the artist’s love of tentacles and pumpkins. And one of artist’s most famous works, the shiny steel orbs of Narcissus Garden (1966/2021), is installed in the Native Plant Garden, floating in the shallow waters like a sea of tiny globes.
Those four Kusama artworks are on view to all visitors, but the indoor works, including those in the conservatory and library, will require a special galleries ticket, priced at $35 for adults. (General grounds admission is $25.)
Later in the season, health regulations permitting, the show will add one final piece, Infinity Mirrored Room—Illusion Inside the Heart (2020), which features colored glass and natural light. Guests will be required to purchase a separate ticket for access.
Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity (2017). Collection of the artist.Photo courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Weekend dates are already sold out through June 30, but the show is on view through Halloween, providing ample opportunity to visit despite capacity restrictions.
And for those who looking for an extra helping of Kusama—or who can’t snag a ticket to the gardens yet—New York gallery David Benrimon Fine Art is opening a show of the artist’s prints next week.
But the garden, with the interplay of the sun and breeze and flowers, undoubtedly offers a unique way to experience Kusama’s work.
“This exhibition will be great to see as the seasons change,” Leshi said. “So now you’re seeing spring, then you’ll see summer, then you’ll see the fall and there’ll be different things like the Kiku, the Japanese chrysanthemums.”
See more photos from the show below.
Yayoi Kusama, Dancing Pumpkin (2020) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Yayoi Kusama, My Soul Blooms Forever (2019) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Yayoi Kusama, Starry Pumpkin at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden (1966/2021) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Yayoi Kusama, Life (2015) at the New York Botanical Garden. Collection of the artist. Photo by Robert Benson Photography, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and David Zwirner.
Flower paintings by Yayoi Kusama at the New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
“Kusama: Cosmic Nature” is on view at the New York Botanical Garden, Southern Boulevard, Bronx, April 10–October 31, 2021.
“Yayoi Kusama: Infinity” is on view at David Benrimon Fine Art, the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, April 15–May 27, 2021. 
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You are probably not doing much aimless browsing in stores right now. But if you did find yourself walking through the airy fifth floor of Nordstrom’s 57th Street flagship in Manhattan, you would encounter an artist’s tender ode to suburban teenage girlhood tucked in between rows of cosmetic displays and candy-colored athleisure.
The installation, by filmmaker and multimedia artist Maggie Lee, is the latest site-specific work in an ongoing partnership between the retailer and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s emerging artist program, which began in 2018.
Malls have a special place in the artist’s heart; she recalls spending endless afternoons as a child waiting for her mother to finish work at a department store in suburban New Jersey.
“I thought about department stores and malls and how teenagers like to spend time in places for long periods of time and for no good reason at all,” the artist said in a statement. Of course, today, teens are more likely to spend time with one another in virtual space than real life. But Lee’s work is a remnant of a less connected time, and extends an open invitation for anyone to loiter.
The installation, called Daytime Sparkles, is a more sanitized and arch version of other nostalgia trips, like Hulu’s cringe-comedy series Pen15, which celebrate the awkwardness and joy of coming of age. What Lee wants is for others “to reclaim and be part of something. To see something special in the daytime—a sparkle is irregular.”
The living room-style space is configured around clunky television sets, which screen commercials Lee created to advertise products that teenage girls could only dream of affording: luxe Diptyque candles with scents like Mimosa, Fig Tree, and Tuberose and $65 Byredo Suede hand wash (perhaps the 2021 equivalent of Bath & Body Works cucumber-watermelon body spray).
On the walls, glittery floral cutouts and origami folding stars are arranged in clusters, alongside a few large “NO LOITERING” signs. A pop song the artist produced in collaboration with Stefan Tcherepnin is plays over the speakers.
Installation view, Maggie Lee, “Daytime Sparkles.” Photo: Connie Zhou. Courtesy of Nordstrom.
The seeds for this project were planted when Lee’s mother died unexpectedly in 2012 and she found herself thrust back into her childhood home in suburban New Jersey. At the time, Lee was constantly blogging to work through her grief, and her posts caught the attention of producer Asher Penn, who invited her to turn her musings into a film. The result, a feature-length film called Mommy, was released in 2015 by Beta Pictures, and also figured in group shows at Greene Naftali and the Whitney.
Combining snippets of home videos, voicemails, family photographs, stuffed animals, and internet screen savers, Mommy is a sort of memorial time capsule. Daytime Sparkles continues this thread—but what is trapped in amber now is Lee’s younger self and a past-time at the mall that may soon go extinct.
Daytime Sparkles is on view through May 16, 2021 at Nordstrom NYC Flagship, 5th Floor
Installation view of Maggie Lee’s Mommy (2015) at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Installation view, Maggie Lee, “Daytime Sparkles.” Photo: Connie Zhou. Courtesy of Nordstrom.
Installation view, Maggie Lee, “Daytime Sparkles.” Photo: Connie Zhou. Courtesy of Nordstrom.
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What is a table? According to the characters in a humorous artist book by Lawrence Weiner, it’s “something to put something on.” Simple enough, right? Not for artist Rashid Johnson, who has said that reading Weiner’s book, aptly titled Something to Put Something On, sparked a whole new way of thinking, and inspired his series of shelf-like sculptures that would hold a range of objects with specific importance to Johnson.
“I was really interested in this idea,” Johnson says in an exclusive interview with Art21 as part of its New York Close Up series, “the semiotics of how something exists and why it exists and what we call it. So I started making something to put something on.” 
Johnson made the shelves from black wax, pieces of mirrors, tiles, and branded wood, all chosen to send up traditional notions of domestic objects are constructed with. Lining the shelves are pieces of the artist’s Afro-centric material life: “the books I was reading, the records I was listening to, the things I was applying to my body,” he tells Art21, and the combination of those things became stand-ins for the artist, his cultural affiliations, and “began to gel together to form what I thought was my conversation.”
Production still from the Art21 “New York Close Up” film, “Rashid Johnson Makes Things to Put Things On.” © Art21, Inc. 2011.
Influences including James Van Der Zee’s photographs of the Harlem Renaissance, Sun Ra’s mystical Afro-futurist philosophy, and Marcus Garvey’s political views all meld together in Johnson’s fictional secret society: The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club—an acknowledgement of the historic struggles of Black Americans tempered by an optimism for the future.
“It’s not fully about the predicament of history,” Johnson says in the video, which first aired in 2011, “it’s about what you’re able to author yourself and how you’re able to form the future rather than living purely kind of in the past.”
For one of his latest shows, at Storm King Art Center in upstate New York, Johnson has installed his sculpture The Crisis, a steel yellow pyramid that is activated by an accompanying ballet, conceived with choreographer Claudia Schreier. The performance follows two hikers, both African American, on individual journeys that eventually meet up.
“How does the Black body function in space when it’s being witnessed versus when it’s not?” the artist asks, noting the rise of footage of violence against Black men and women, and the onslaught of media at the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s about how the body becomes accustomed to the conditions of stress and anxiety.”
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s New York Close Up series, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. “Rashid Johnson: The Crisis” is on view at Storm King Art Center through November 8, 2021. 
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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.
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Can an artwork be too beautiful? That’s the question that prompted artist Barbara Kasten to abandon a series of experimental photographs she made early in her career.
In an exclusive interview filmed as part of Art21’s Extended Play series in 2018, Kasten said she didn’t initially show the works because, “for a long time, I thought they were too beautiful”—a suggestion that might sound odd. But “in the 70’s, the rest of the world thought that beauty was a weakness.” 
Kasten made her works almost by accident. While teaching a sculpture class, in the midst of describing how to render a flat, woven textile as a three-dimensional object, she got the idea to use non-traditional materials with textures incorporated onto prints.
This led Kasten to begin making cyanotypes, a kind of photograph that results in deep blue surfaces because of the type of compound in the emulsion. By placing layers of materials like crinkled paper or window screens onto the emulsion, the resulting works appeared almost like abstracted shadows. 
Production still from the Art21 “Extended Play” film, “Barbara Kasten: Beauty Was a Problem.” © Art21, Inc. 2018.
Her early trials with cyanotypes gave way to other experimental photographic and printmaking practices. Although she has since branched out to use kaleidoscopic colors, the legacy of the cyanotypes is evident in the shape-shifting abstract works.
“I still have an affinity for materials,” she told Art21. “I still respond to the transparencies and textures of different surfaces.” That’s especially apparent in “Barbara Kasten: Scenarios,” a show up now at the Aspen Museum of Art.
And happily for us, she no longer finds weakness in beauty: “the reality is, it’s a strength.”
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. “Barbara Kasten: Scenarios” is on view at the Aspen Art Museum through April 4, 2021.
[embedded content] 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.

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The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has made a major acquisition: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Lucretia (ca. 1627), a striking portrait of an ancient Roman noblewoman pictured moments before she stabs herself with a dagger.
The painting had languished in a private collection in Lyon, France for decades before appearing at auction in 2019, when it sold for a record-breaking $5.3 million at Paris-based Artcurial, six times its high estimate. The previously little-known work set a record at auction for Gentileschi. In a statement preceding the sale, the auction house said that Lucretia was “worthy of the great museums of the world”; now it has been proven correct.
The Getty acquired the painting from an anonymous collector. A spokesperson did not respond to a query about whether the acquisition was a gift, purchase, or mix of the two. Gentileschi works are hard to come by—there are only 40 in public collections, a small portion of which are in the United States.
The subject of this work—the noblewoman who sought to die by suicide after being raped, according to legend—is particularly resonant for Gentileschi, who was raped by her teacher Agostino Tassi at the age of 17. The horrific experience set the tone for Artemisia’s chosen subjects, which often depict strong women who have suffered sexual violence.
“Her achievement as a painter of powerful and dramatic history subjects is all the more remarkable for the abuse and prejudice that she suffered in her personal life—and which is palpably present in Lucretia’s suicide, and other of her paintings where the central protagonist is a wronged or abused woman,” Getty director Timothy Potts told the Los Angeles Times, adding that the painting “will open a window for our visitors onto important issues of injustice, prejudice, and abuse that lie below the beguilingly beautiful surfaces of such works.”
Artemisia Gentileschi, Jael and Sisera (1620). © Szépmüvészeti Múzeum / Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
While the rape trial of her teacher made headlines during her life and would go on to define Gentileschi’s story for centuries, recent exhibitions and scholarship have expanded our understanding of her work and identity. London’s National Gallery organized a show of 29 paintings by Gentileschi, its first-ever exhibition dedicated to a female artist, which closed in January 2021. The artist’s turbulent life is also the subject of a forthcoming scripted TV series from ViacomCBS International Studios.
In 2016, the Getty acquired a work by Artemisia’s father and teacher, Orazio, depicting Danaë (ca. 1621), which Potts described at the time as a “masterpiece of 17th-century Italian painting.” The Getty also owns Orazio’s Lot and His Daughters, which has been a hallmark of the museum’s Baroque holdings since 1998.
In an announcement, the Getty museum noted that Artemisia Gentileschi’s work will be on view when the institution reopens “in the coming weeks,” though a concrete date has not been set. Los Angeles museums were recently given the green light to reopen, following those in San Francisco and the rest of the Bay area, after having been closed for nearly a year.
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Looking at one of Julie Mehretu‘s mammoth canvases is like peering into an alternate reality—the intersecting lines that crisscross in all directions conjure architectural plans and blue prints, but also relief maps and musical compositions. Often there are larger shapes that hover amid the chaos, anchoring it for a moment and orienting the viewer, but always maintaining abstraction, and room for subjectivity.
After a critically acclaimed exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Ethiopia-born artist’s mid-career survey has arrived at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where viewers can appreciate the work’s real-world touchstones in the museum’s skyline views.
In 2010, Mehretu was featured in an exclusive interview as part of Art21’s Extended Play series, where she is seen in her Berlin studio contemplating one of her calligraphic compositions. “Some days, you’ll have a great, great day and work for the entire day,” she tells Art21, “and make headway, and have realizations and leave in the best place because you had this intense engagement.”
But, like anything else, some days aren’t so productive. Because of the all-over-ness of the works, Mehretu often finds “a new point of entry” that allows her to reengage with the picture, she says. Ultimately, being surrounded by her work—she often has multiple paintings and drawings in various states of completion at any given time—affords Mehretu the time and space she needs.
“I think that’s part of the work,” she says, “just being in here… really realizing the painting.”
Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century series, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. “Julie Mehretu” is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through August 8, 2021.
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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.

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