Current Exhibitions

In Tribute

Opening January 23, 2023

In Tribute honors the lives of three notable artists who passed in 2022 by featuring a selection of their work from KMA’s collections: Jennifer Bartlett, Sam Gilliam, and Claes Oldenburg. Bartlett defied categorization by combining the aesthetics of conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-Expressionism. Gilliam, an innovator of color field painting and a lyrical abstractionist, is also included in the Centering Black Artists exhibition. Oldenburg was a Pop artist whose monumental sculptures of everyday objects are installed in public spaces worldwide.

Gesture of the Still Image 

January 17 - March 26, 2023 

Gesture of the Still Image is a selection of photographs and related mediums from KMA’s collections chosen for their portrayal of the human body in a moment of movement and emotion stilled by an artist’s lens. Within this exhibition one can witness the way an image tells a story in a single frame and allows the viewer a glimpse into the human condition. Work chosen by KMA graduate assistant Ashley Kouri, an MFA candidate in Photography and Integrated Media, spans over a century of the history of photography from the pictorialism of Clarence White to contemporary imagery recently purchased by the Museum. The addition of photographs by Lissa Rivera and Lalla Essaydi expands the ratio of female-identifying to male-identifying artists both in the exhibition and KMA collections.

CONVERSATIONS…

January 17-August 6 2023

The exhibition CONVERSATIONS…, curated by student staff in the education department of the Kennedy Museum of Art, begins with the notion that we often create individual meaning from simple visual connections between objects. Those connections are expanded conceptually by further investigating an artist or artwork and then deepened by inviting others from different discipline areas, backgrounds, or experiences, to engage in conversation around works that have been intentionally paired.