Shows & Exhibitions

After a long and winding road, a painting depicting Dutch Golden Age master Rembrandt van Rijn is back on view in the Netherlands for the first time in more than five decades. The question of who actually painted Rembrandt in a Red Beret, however, remains unanswered.
Last month, the picture went on display at the Escher in Het Paleis, a former royal palace in The Hague named for its collection of work by Dutch graphical artist M.C. Escher. Its presentation was timed to coincide with the publication of a new book, Rembrandt in a Red Beret: The Vanishings and Reappearances of a Self-Portrait, which details the surprising history of the artwork.
The publication was commissioned by the picture’s current owner, Johann Eller. And writing it convinced the book’s author—art historian and Rembrandt expert Gary Schwartz—that the work is an autograph self portrait.
“It was accepted unconditionally as a Rembrandt from 1823 to 1969,” he told the New York Times. “It’s a canonical image, and no one else painted those kinds of images. I simply don’t see why it would be doubted.” The painting depicts the master at around the age of 37.
Dutch Rembrandt specialist Gary Schwartz poses next to Rembrandt in a Red Beret, either by Rembrandt van Rijn or his studio, at the Escher in Het Paleis in the Hague. (Photo by Bas Czerwinski/ANP/AFP via Getty Images).
But as he began investigating the work’s checkered past at the behest of its current owner, Schwartz uncovered a twisting tale far more intriguing than a simple question of authorship.
The first known record of the painting dates to 1823, when it was in the collection of King Willem II of the Netherlands. His son, Prince Hendrik, displayed it at the Het Paleis from 1850 to 1879. The canvas was inherited by Wilhelm Ernst, a German grand duke, who lent it to the Grand Ducal Museum, in Weimar, Germany, in 1909. There, it was stolen in a 1921 heist.
It was a daring theft that involved scaling the building, climbing up a lightning rod, and entering through a window. At the time, a newspaper noted that the robbers had made off with a “world-famous self-portrait of the Dutch master, a work from his best period, painted one year later than the famous Night Watch in Amsterdam.”
Later reports claimed that two men confessed to the burglary, but the painting was never recovered, despite a reward of 100,000 Deutsche Marks.
From there, the trail went cold for over two decades, until 1945, when a woman named Anna Cunningham showed up at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio and presented the painting to the museum’s director Siegfried Weng. He immediately recognized the stolen canvas—by then heavily damaged—and suspected it had been looted during World War II.
Cunningham’s husband, a plumber named Leo Ernst, had told her a different story. He claimed that while visiting New York City in 1934, he got drunk with a group of German sailors and woke up to find three mysterious canvases in his hotel room the next morning. He said he had kept the Rembrandt in his closet ever since.
After briefly exhibiting the picture at the Art Institute, Weng decided to turn it over to the Art Looting Investigation Unit in Washington, D.C., led by Charles Henry Sawyer, one of the Monuments Men who had worked to preserve and recover cultural heritage during the war. The government confiscated the work, and for 20 years it was housed at the National Gallery of Art in D.C.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided it was high time that the U.S. returned artworks seized during the war. The government sent the portrait of Rembrandt to West Germany in 1967, with the painting eventually making its way back to an heir of Wilhelm Ernst, who sold it in 1983 to Eller. (Schwartz’s research involved combing through declassified government documents for mentions of the canvas.)
Since a 1969 update to Abraham Bredius’s catalogue raisonné of Rembrandt’s work, Rembrandt in a Red Beret has been attributed to the Dutch master’s pupil Ferdinand Bol, or dismissed as the work of the artist’s studio—or even as a later copy.
Schwartz believes that the poor condition of the work is negatively influencing experts’ opinions about the piece, which is now being shown publicly for the first time in 55 years.
“It’s my damaged Rembrandt,” he said. “Because there’s so much missing and it has been painted over, it makes the wrong impression when you see it for the first time.”
Should scholars come to agree with Schwartz’s assertion that it is a Rembrandt, its value would skyrocket.
“Rembrandt Back in The Hague” is on view at the Escher in Het Paleis, Lange Voorhout 74, 2514 EH The Haag, Netherlands, until January 29, 2023.
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More artworks recently rescued from war-torn Ukraine are going on public view—this time in Switzerland in two exhibitions being staged concurrently. The shows, which feature works from Kyiv National Art Gallery, serve both to introduce the country’s art and cultural heritage to a different audience and act as a temporary shelter to protect the works from being destroyed or stolen as the war rages on.
“Born in Ukraine,” which opened at the Kunstmuseum Basel on Tuesday and runs through April 30, includes 49 masterpieces made by 31 Ukrainian artists between the 18th and 20th centuries. While “From Dusk to Dawn” at the Musée Rath in Geneva, features 50 works selected for their nocturnal themes. Organized by the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, the show is due to run through April 23.
The opening of these exhibitions follows a recent rescue mission in which 51 Ukrainian avant-garde artworks from the National Art Museum of Ukraine and the Museum of Theater, Music, and Cinema of Ukraine were transported out of the country in a secret convoy on November 15—just hours before the bombing of Kyiv. Following their narrow escape, the works made their way to Spain, where they are now on show at Madrid’s Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in the exhibition, “In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–30.”
In the case of the Kyiv National Art Gallery, the plan to move the masterpieces out of Ukraine began during the first months of the war, according to the Kyiv museum’s director, Iurii Vakulenko. Staff began contacting colleagues in Switzerland after the museum’s building was damaged during a rocket attack on central Kyiv.
It took several months to identify suitable museum partners, negotiate the details, and organize the journey. “In November 2022, the paintings were transported in a secret operation using special transport vehicles with a reinforced convoy to the border with the E.U., and then to Switzerland,” Vakulenko told Artnet News.
Constant shelling of the country’s infrastructure and potential blackouts meant the team faced the risk of delayed evacuations should the border crossing control system shut down, he said. “For two days, the paintings traveled through one of the most dangerous parts of Ukraine,” he added.
“We were very worried about the safety of the collection [during] transportation because there was constant shelling. Now, of course, we’re happy that part of the collection is currently safe and has found its temporary home here in Switzerland,” Vakulenko said.
The paintings arrived in Basel on November 25, according to the  Kunstmuseum Basel, and will remain in the museum until the show ends, and possibly in the institution’s storage after that. The details, however, have not been finalized.
As of November 7, more than 70,000 Ukrainians have fled to Switzerland and applied for refugee status, according to Swiss authorities.
Here are a few highlights from the exhibitions.
“Born in Ukraine,” at the Kunstmuseum Basel, until 30 April 2023
Mykola Kuznetsov, Gemüse (1888). Image courtesy of Kyiv National Art Gallery. (Photo: Julian Salinas)
Zinayida Serebryakova, Selbstbildnis (1923–24). Image courtesy of Kyiv National Art Gallery.

Lev Lagorio, Seelanschaft (1886). Image courtesy of Kyiv National Art Gallery. (Photo: Julian Salinas)
Archip Kuindschi, Der Abend (1885–90). Image courtesy of Kyiv National Art Gallery.
Illia Repin, Ukrainisches Haus (1880). Image courtesy of Kyiv National Art Gallery.
Illia Repin, Studie für Golgotha (1896). Image courtesy of Kyiv National Art Gallery. (Photo: Julian Salinas)
Illia Repin’s Junge Frauen spazieren inmitten einer Kuhherde (1896), left, and Bildnis des Dichters Serhij Horodetsky mit seiner Frau Hanna Horodestka, geb. Kozelska (1914), right. Image courtesy of Kyiv National Art Gallery. (Photo: Julian Salinas)

“From Dusk to Dawn” at Musée Rath, organized by the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva, until April 23, 2023

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Toxic masculinity, bro culture, and incel communities have all undergone rigorous critique in recent years. It’s unusual, however, to find the subjects confronted in such a personal way as in British artist Guy J. Oliver’s current exhibition, “We Put the Unction Into Erectile Dysfunction”, at London’s Brooke Benington gallery until January 14, 2023. New Video work, sculptures, and watercolors offer a nuanced voice, tackling masculinity’s unspoken vulnerabilities and dangerous release valves. 
“I have always put myself in the middle of my work,” said Oliver in an interview with Artnet News. “It is an examination of how I am posited within the context of a wider culture. Ideas of masculinity have been in my work since I first used WWF wrestling as a subject years ago, which I was completely obsessed with as a child.”
We Put The Unction In Erectile Dysfunction from Guy J. Oliver’s exhibition at London’s Brooke Benington gallery. Image courtesy of the artist and Brooke Benington.
A graduate of the Royal College of Arts, Oliver is one of the most exciting names in Margate’s art scene. He co-runs the emerging artist space Quench (which is currently showing James Metsoja and a group exhibition exploring thirst), with fellow artist Lindsey Mendick. In 2020, Oliver won the Jerwood/FVU award, which led to the commission of the piece, You Know Nothing of My Work. 
Both witty and alarming, the exhibition combines YouTube videos (including one featuring a man explaining how to breathe into your balls so as not to speak in a “castrated fashion”), with personal monologues about erectile dysfunction, hair loss, and body image. During particularly sensitive moments, Oliver is disguised as Mr. Soft—the mascot of British confectioner Trebor’s popular Soft Mints. The mood switches in seconds from self-pity to humor and the violent ends of masculinity: war. 
“This work has come out of actual experiences over a large chunk of my younger life,” said Oliver. “It seemed to be an ideal way of talking about masculinity, particularly embarrassment, shame, vulnerability, and on the flipside—anger and aggression. I have never felt so nervous and uncomfortable showing work in my life. I’m addressing things that I’ve spent a long time trying to hide but hope that tension will make it meaningful.”
The work explores how men speak to one another. The YouTube videos often take a “tough love” approach, but there’s also a sense of everything that is not said. In one scene, the artist describes a young man holding up a ticker tape while Oliver was DJing. The tape stated that his music choices were making the man soft. Was the man trying to communicate something of his own erectile concerns, wonders the artist, while hiding behind this insult?
“In my own versions of the bro videos, I start being quite abusive to the viewer, but end up apologizing and saying they should be treated like a prince,” said Oliver. “It’s a bit like PUA [pickup artist] strategies of negging women to get their attention. Often bro videos talk about being vulnerable to ultimately be strong. I came across them while looking for help some years ago. I followed Farhan Khawaja [a.k.a. Doc Testerone] even though I found him repellent in many ways. His narrative is that he was a total loser, Ph.D. nerd, and had chronic erectile dysfunction until he went into the science of testosterone and turned himself into a love god. It is a seductive narrative that offers practical solutions, comparable to other self-help routes. But it’s a short algorithm away from more sinister things. It’s linked to PUAs, [clinical psychologist] Jordan Peterson, and Alt-right politics.”
The poetic use of language and musical beats accompany the video. Oliver plays with popular lyrics from the Pet Shop Boys, including “What have I done to deserve this,” and weaves references to performance artist Laurie Anderson’s iconic 1981 song O Superman throughout. 
“O Superman has a distinct critique of masculinity,” he said. “Laurie Anderson is quite androgynous yet feminine, and her fist gesture that I have referenced is provocative and funny. There are references to American military power in the song, and it felt right to include [former U.S. president Donald] Trump in the video as a symbol of where you end up if you take the male ego and entitlement to the limit. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’, is meant ironically, like the original, to address the unironic self-pity I have felt in the past. I want to talk about self-pity as a destructive force that can lead to extreme behavior if allowed to fester.”
A detail of Hey It’s Fine (2022) from Guy J. Oliver’s exhibition, “We Put the Unction Into Erectile Dysfunction”, at London’s Brooke Benington. Image courtesy of the artist and Brooke Benington.
The combination of pop culture references and personal narratives is a recurring theme for Oliver. The Year Everyone Died is a 2021 video essay that discusses the spate of celebrity deaths in 2016, including the deaths of David Bowie and Carrie Fisher, alongside Oliver’s personal losses. Other moments from the year that rocked the world are threaded throughout the piece, from Trump’s election to Brexit. The Commissioner (2022) examines the artistic commissions of the Egyptian billionaire businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, interspersed with clips of him on Da Ali G Show and snippets of his late son, Dodi, with Princess Diana. 
Upon viewing We Put the Unction Into Erectile Dysfunction, it becomes apparent how universal these issues are. Body confidence and the pressure to perform in a certain way impact everyone, but these conversations still seem stilted around masculinity. “It is a taboo subject,” said Oliver. “Even talking about the exhibition beforehand, sometimes people didn’t know how to react. It has been encouraging since it opened though. A couple of friends have told me they had the same problems I refer to, like excessive blushing, and it really affected them when they were younger. I hope things are opening up but I think it’s the responsibility of male artists to be honest and address their own experience.”
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On the heels of it inclusion in an exhibition at Castello di Rivoli in Italy earlier this year, Beeple’s first hybrid sculpture, Human One, will now make its way to M+ Museum in Hong Kong, heralding the artist’s first solo presentation in a major Asian institution. 
Human One depicts a helmeted astronaut walking through an ethereal landscape on a four-channel digital video loop, set within a polished aluminum frame and mahogany wood support. The work was purchased as an NFT for more than $28 million by digital art collector Ryan Zurrer at a Christie’s auction in 2021; its physical form will be installed in M+’s Focus Gallery beginning December 9.
“I am extremely excited and honored to have my work showing in M+,” Beeple said. “I believe artwork like this that is dynamic and has the ability to change meaning over a long period of time shows the true potential for digital art both now and in the future.”
Beeple rose to prominence on the heels of Everydays: the First 5,000 Days, a collage of images minted as an NFT, which fetched a whopping $69.3 million at auction in March 2021.
Since then, Beeple has gone on to spearhead a number of new projects and initiatives, including a major studio and physical digital art gallery set to open next year in North Carolina, as well as a recently announced advisory role with Yuga Labs. The latter position comes after the company acquired WENEW, a NFT startup that Beeple co-founded in 2021, which has pursued a number of brand collaborations with the likes of Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Playboy.
The new M+ museum seen across the Hong Kong skyline. Courtesy of M+.
M+ opened in November 2021 in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, with the core of the museum’s collection coming from the Swiss art collector and former ambassador to China, Uli Sigg. The museum currently houses a number of other works that align heavily with digital art, including Ian Cheng’s generative, A.I-powered work, B.O.B. (Bag of Beliefs) (2018–19), as well as Harun Farocki’s Parallels I-IV (2012–14), a video installation that homages early video game culture. 
According to Sunny Cheung, the M+ curator responsible for stewarding Beeple’s HUMAN ONE toward the museum, the sculpture conceptually echoes several other core pieces of M+’s collection. 
He points to RMB City (2009) by Cao Fei, a virtual work that “depicts a land within Second Life, which is for all intents and purposes, an early vision for the metaverse,” he told Artnet News. “Of course, Human One, as an iconic piece of our times, takes on [that] mantle.”

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It’s going to be a tight squeeze in the National History Museum (NHM) next Spring when the London institution welcomes its biggest star exhibit: the cast of a Titanosaur, one of the largest known dinosaurs.
“Titanosaur: Life as the Biggest Dinosaur” will see the 122-feet-long Titanosaur installed in the museum’s Waterhouse Gallery, narrowly fitting into the roughly 30-feet-high space. The skeleton cast weighs four times more than Dippy, the Diplodocus replica that occupied the museum’s Hintze Hall from 1905 to 2017, and measures nearly 40 feet longer than Hope, the blue whale skeleton that replaced Dippy.
“Comparable in weight to more than nine African elephants, this star specimen will inspire visitors to care for some of the planet’s largest and most vulnerable creatures, which face similar challenges for survival,” said Paul Barrett, science lead on the exhibition, in a statement, “and show that within the Earth’s ecosystems, size really does matter.”
The Patagotitan skull. Photo courtesy of MEF.
Titanosaurs were a class of sauropod dinosaurs, recognizable for their long necks and tails, that lived during the late Cretaceous period, more than 66 million years ago. The specimen going on view at the NHM is based on remains discovered by a rancher in the region of Patagonia, Argentina, and excavated by a team from the Egidio Feruglio Paleontological Museum (MEF) in 2014. 
In 2017, the find was christened the Patagotitan mayorum, a name inspired by the region where its bones were found as much as its size. Since then, a replica of the skeleton—the most complete Titanosaur ever discovered—has gone on view at the Field Museum in Chicago and the American Natural History Museum in New York. 
The Patagotitan mayorum on view at the American Natural History Museum. Photo courtesy of NHM.
At the NHM, the Titanosaur, on loan from MEF, will be accompanied by artistic renderings depicting Cretaceous-era flora and fauna, and the lifespan of the dinosaur. The exhibition will also include interactive and educational materials, inviting visitors to handle a cast of the Titanosaur’s skull, while urging reflection on what can be done to protect existing colossal animals amid a climate emergency.
“Our fascination with dinosaurs provides the ideal opportunity to inspire and inform the next generation about the natural world,” said Alex Burch, the NHM’s Director of Public Programmes, “and empower them to act for the planet.”
“Titanosaur: Life as the Biggest Dinosaur” will go on view from March 31, 2023–January 7, 2024 at the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London.

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Art week in Miami is always a scene, with collectors, artists, and gallerists descending on the city for a few days. But, there is a wealth of art to see beyond the tents. Here are 11 institutional shows you don’t want to miss.

1. “Leandro Erlich: Liminal” at the Pérez Art Museum Miami
Leandro Erlich, Swimming Pool (1999). Installation view: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2004. Photo: © Noriko Inomoto.

Leandro Erlich—the artist who made a big pre-pandemic splash at Art Basel in 2019 with his sand-covered sculptures of 66 cars and trucks, depicting a Miami traffic jam and installed on an actual beach—is back in Miami with a show that marks the first monographic survey of his work in North America. The exhibition was selected and arranged by New York-based guest curator Dan Cameron, and will present 16 works that span more than two decades of Erlich’s production. The Buenos Aires-born artist has represented Argentina in the Venice Biennale and appeared in the Whitney Biennial.

PAMM is located at 1103 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami.

2. “Alexandre Diop: 2022 Artist-in-Residence” at the Rubell Museum
Alexandre Diop, Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame be (tohim) who thinks evil of it) (2022). Courtesy of the Rubell Museum.
It’s no secret that Don and Mera Rubell have the Midas touch. The residency program at the couple’s Miami-based museum is a serious coup for any young artist, and it’s no exception for Alexandre Diop. The Senegalese-Franco artist uses everyday found materials in the spirit of Arte Povera to lend his portraits a textural complexity.
The Rubell Museum is located at 1100 NW 23 Street, Miami.

3. “In the Mind’s Eye: Landscapes of Cuba” at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum More

You could hear the deep droning hum even before the black granite block that housed the Australian pavilion came into view, and feel the vibrations as you approached it in the Giardini at the Venice Biennale. Inside, those who braved it past the threshold were bombarded with a wall of amps, a giant floor-to-ceiling LED screen, a cacophony of black-and-white images, and abrasive Noise-metal and feedback. 
When I visited the pavilion during the Biennale’s opening in April, the soundscape was so massive, the deluge of images so disorienting, that it was easy to miss the man sitting on a road case, next to the row of amps, with his back to the room. But Marco Fusinato, the artist and musician behind the work DESASTRES, was almost always there—playing a sleek, EGC aluminum guitar and effect pedals every day of the Biennale’s 200-day run. 
DESASTRES (2022) Solo durational performance as installation 200 days. Installation view, Australia Pavilion, 59th Venice Biennale. Photographer: Andrea Rossetti.
Sometimes the pavilion was full of viewers who succumbed to the meditative qualities this overpowering sensory experience could offer, and sat down to let the work wash over them for hours. And sometimes Fusinato was there alone, playing at deafening volumes as the images on the monumental screen would come and go, washing the pavilion with light, then infusing it with darkness. 
“It’s very divisive. Either you love it or you hate it. There’s not much in between,” Fusinato told Artnet News during an interview between live music sessions. He was nearly an hour late to our conversation but the energy inside the pavilion was so ecstatic that he told us he had lost track of time. The improvised sound emanating from the amps triggered an AI system that spat out images from the artist’s personal archive and at that point, it was “just right,” he said, so he “went down that path.”
The interplay of the sound with the technology that randomized the images—what Fusinato calls the “Score”—and the energy inside the space was never the same. “I’m always searching for something that I can’t quantify; it’s a feeling. And then you might find it and you sit on it for a while. It can take you places,” he said.
A Punk Gig Without a Stage 
The 59th Venice Biennale came to a close on November 27, and it is often the case that national pavilions schedule live performances, talks, or other public-engagement programs during the final week, as La Serenissima once again fills with art professionals and visitors rushing to view one of the artworld’s most important exhibitions before it closes. But Fusinato had been putting on a unique live event day-in-and-day-out for seven months, at times conjuring a high-intensity concentration of raw energy that is nothing short of life affirming. 
And that, in spite of the fact that DESASTRES, which evokes Francisco Goya’s suite of etchings Los Desastres de la Guerra (1810-20), doesn’t exactly uplift. The images in Fusinato’s archive, amassed during Australia’s long lockdowns, are as discordant as his doom and death metal references. They range from found news images of civil protests, war, and manmade disasters, to historical illustrations of torture and bloodletting, among many other motifs, some less identifiable. 
“DESASTRES is a monster,” Alexie Glass-Kantor, the pavilion’s curator, said in her opening address. “A banquet of images that range from the benign to the blatant, absurd, twisted, sublime, bone-crushing, and tense.” 
The images’ sequence and combinations might have been confounding, but they clearly speak of our endless capacity for violence and destruction. And in the 200-days since Fusinato first switched on the amps, disasters and war continued to rage around the world, their digital images popping up on our personal screens. 
DESASTRES (2022). Solo durational performance as installation 200 days. Installation view, Australia Pavilion, 59th Venice Biennale.Photographer: Andrea Rossetti.
The audience could walk around the amps and LED monitor, cables and wires exposed, and get behind the huge screen, where the connections between the panels flickered in a hypnotizing sequence of red and green. The only other element of color in the space was a small 400-year-old painting of a decapitated head placed neatly on a red book. The artist found this memento mori at auction while searching for images online and felt compelled to buy it. It was the pavilion’s “mascot” as he put it, and he moved it around in the space every day. 
For Fusinato, the work’s openness allowed visitors to bring their own experiences into it. “There are many elements coming together here: the aesthetics of noise, music and time, underground subgenres, extreme music, and decayed imagery,” he said. “Some people may have never experienced volume at this level or that kind of noise concert, which has a very particular aesthetic and philosophical code.” But whether a viewer could recognize such codes is secondary to its cathartic effect, he pointed out. “It’s an attitude.” 
Some found this collusion of the elements of spectacle confusing, and would get too close to the artist. “They treat me like a marble sculpture! I have to tell them to fuck off,” he said. 
“It’s a bit like a punk gig and, essentially, when they walk into the pavilion they’re walking onto a stage, but in this context, it’s really like we’re all on the same platform, so that’s been something to constantly negotiate,” he added. 
A Sharper Focus
Born in Melbourne in 1964, Fusinato’s roots are here in the Veneto region, where his parents emigrated from, and he considers the steadily disappearing local dialect of the Belluno province his first language. “I’m here representing Australia, but I also have an Italian passport and I feel like I don’t belong in either. I’m here making work. I can’t take on the baggage and absurdity of any form of nationalism,” he said. 
During the long months in the Giardini, as audiences came and went and a new far-right Italian government came to power, Fusinato found a community in the guards, cleaners, and invigilators—the workers meant to go unnoticed. “I really wanted to create that kind of environment that’s welcoming and in the same spirit as the work,” he said. (It also helps that the Australian pavilion is one of the few with a kitchen and bathroom.) 
Clocking in eight hours a day in the pavilion proved to be a unique luxury that brought certain things into focus. “It’s been very much about labor and occupying space. What’s been eliminated is administration, Zoom meetings, and all this kind of stuff that so much of our time is given over to. It’s been so liberating to prioritize that instead of all that other kind of drag,” he said.
Fusinato didn’t want to abandon this feeling and let this emphasis fade away when the pavilion closed and life went on. He is making plans to funnel the electrifying impressions that he had accumulated in the past months into a live situation for a large audience. “This project originally began with a drummer who plays in death metal grindcore bands,” he explained, but the idea that the drumming would trigger the images was abandoned along the way. 
Now, Fusinato is thinking of pursuing it in a future show or music gig. But the intimacy inside the space and the intensity of the moments in which Fusinato’s guitar fed on the audience’s palpable energy will remain a unique experience, like a legendary concert. You were either there or you weren’t.
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The most in-depth survey of the Beastie Boys—the New York trio that shifted the plates of punk, rap, and hip-hop over a four-decade career—is opening at Beyond the Streets’s flagship gallery in Los Angeles on December 10.
“Exhibit” will gather previously unseen objects, artifacts, and personal items in its chronicle of the group’s history and legacy. There are notebooks and instruments bearing out the Beasties’s creative approach throughout the years, concert memorabilia pointing to their global footprint, and original album art highlighting their myriad collaborations with visual artists. 
“There’s so much more that I’m sure we could do a 15,000-square foot exhibition,” Roger Gastman, founder of Beyond the Streets, told Artnet News. “But this is where we’re gonna start.”
Photo: courtesy of Beyond the Streets.
The Beastie Boys originally emerged as a hardcore punk outfit in the early 1980s, before hitting gold when they began incorporating rap, then emergent, into their repertoire. The band’s fast-selling debut album, 1986’s Licensed to Ill, commenced a run of eight records that saw it variously test the boundaries of hip-hop with rock, jazz, funk, and experimental soundscapes to platinum-selling effect. 
The group dissolved in 2012, following the death of founding member Adam Yauch (aka MCA). 
In 2018, the surviving Beasties, Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horowitz (Ad-Rock), released Beastie Boys Book. A loving retrospective, the hardback volume detailed the band’s lifespan—from its punk roots to its final show at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee—through photographs, essays, comic strips, and the odd recipe. 
The New York Times called it a “fascinating, generous book,” but Gastman had a more pertinent question: “Where’s all the stuff from the book?” His hope was to gather the many objects featured in Beastie Boys Book for an installation to coincide with the book tour. “This would be the closest for people to come to them, their creativity and energy,” he said. “[The group] said sure, so we figured it out and we did it.”
The installation was staged as part of Beyond the Streets’s 2019 exhibition in New York. According to Gastman, there were talks with museums about hosting further shows, but the pandemic put a damper on those plans. So when Beyond the Streets, already much-celebrated as a traveling exhibition, launched its permanent gallery space in September, a Beastie Boys exhibition was “high on our minds,” said Gastman. 
Photo: courtesy of Beyond the Streets.
“We don’t want our flagship space to just be an art gallery where we sell art,” he added. “Education through entertainment, telling stories, and museum exhibitions are all things we want to do, plan to do, and are doing. The Beastie Boys seemed like such an incredible start to that storytelling.”
“Exhibit,” however, goes further in telling the story of the rap group by logging its entwinement with art and style. Featured in the show will be the original drawings by Cey Adams for the Beasties’s first hip-hop release “Cooky Puss,” Check Your Head letterings by Eric Haze, Hello Nasty toy designs by Bill McMullen, and early photographs by Glen E. Friedman. The Beastie Boys’s choice of footwear—Adidas, of course—is likewise represented.
Gastman himself is excited about displaying the group’s 30- to 40-year cache of handwritten lyrics, capturing not just its creative evolution, but a process that has been lost with the advent of smart technology.
“The Beasties’s approach to everything was so original, unique, and respectful of their history that it has permeated culture,” he emphasized. “They weren’t just a hip-hop group, they weren’t just punk rockers—they did everything.”
“Exhibit” will be on view at Beyond the Streets, 434 N La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, December 10, 2022–January 28, 2023. Tickets are complimentary and available to reserve here.
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