The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City will present two crowd-pleasing exhibitions this fall. First up is Alex Katz: Gathering, a retrospective of the native New Yorker’s vital work—80 years of portraits, social scenes and landscapes.
The 95-year-old Katz (born in 1927) had an active hand in curating the exhibition, which includes paintings, oil sketches, collages, drawings, prints and freestanding “cutout” works celebrating a wide-ranging mastery. Alex Katz: Gathering opens on October 21.
Pictured above is Katz in his studio with “Yellow Tree 2”, 108 x 108 inches, oil on linen, January 2021.
Then on November 18, the Guggenheim opens the stirring exhibition Nick Cave: Forothermore—to “honor the artist’s lifelong commitment to creating space for those who feel marginalized by dominant society and culture.”
In keeping with Cave’s commitment, the show will be free to the public for the opening weekend, “thanks in part to support by Ford Foundation.”
Above: Nick Cave, “Wall Relief,” 2013. © Nick Cave. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo: James Prinz.
Nick Cave: Forothermore is curated by Guggenheim’s new Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator Naomi Beckwith (photo below).
Beckwith, a groundbreaking figure, is the first Black curator to hold the position at the museum. Guggenheim Museum & Foundation Director Richard Armstrong said Beckwith’s expertise “will be invaluable in advancing and amplifying an inclusive range of perspectives within the Guggenheim collection and culture.”
Nick Cave: Forothermore is Beckwith’s curatorial debut at the Guggenheim, which she joined in June 2021.
In a statement, Beckwith said, “One cannot overstate the iconicity and consequence of the Guggenheim Museum—yet, refusing to rest on its laurels, it readily presents projects that disrupt art history’s mythologies.”
Beckwith is already disrupting art history’s mythologies by becoming perhaps the first curator at the Guggenheim to be mentioned by name on the TV game show Jeopardy!
