Jeffrey Gibson: The Body Electric
February 3–April 23, 2023
This major exhibition was devoted to one of today’s leading artists, whose multidisciplinary practice combines aspects of traditional Indigenous art and culture with a modernist visual vocabulary. Born in Colorado in 1972, Jeffrey Gibson is of Cherokee heritage and a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw. His vibrant work, which is represented in more than twenty permanent collections across the United States, is a call for Indigenous empowerment as well as queer visibility and environmental sustainability.
Organized by SITE Santa Fe and curated by Brandee Caoba
Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art
May 26–August 13, 2023
Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art was the first exhibition to explore the instrument’s symbolism in American art from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Featuring over one hundred works of art and dozens of exceptional instruments, the exhibition demonstrated that guitars figure prominently in the visual stories Americans tell about themselves. Works by artists such as John Baldessari, Thomas Hart Benton, Lonnie Holley, Dorothea Lange, and Annie Leibovitz and seminal instruments by Fender, Gibson, and C. F. Martin & Company showed how guitars have served as symbols of American history, cultural attitudes, identities, and aspirations.
Organized by Leo G. Mazow, Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature
April 7–September 17, 2023
This magical, family-friendly exhibition celebrated the creative and ecological achievements of the beloved English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866–1943). In The Tale of Peter Rabbit, first self-published in London in 1901, and twenty-two other children’s books, Potter imagined an enchanting world of animals and gardens.
Through letters, photographs, sketches, watercolors, and more, this exhibition explored how Potter developed her stories and characters. It also reveals that Potter’s books were just one manifestation of her love of nature—she engaged in scientific studies, farming, and land conservation as well. Drawn to Nature showed all these facets of Potter’s remarkable life and legacy in vibrant detail.
Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage
September 15, 2023–December 31, 2023
The first major museum exhibition devoted to the subject, Multiplicity presented over 80 major collage and collage-informed works that reflect the breadth and complexity of Black identity. Featuring an intergenerational group of 52 living artists, Multiplicity explored the varying ways collage is employed and how the technique suggests diverse conceptual concerns such as cultural hybridity, notions of beauty, gender fluidity, and historical memory. By assembling pieces of paper, photographs, fabric, and salvaged or repurposed materials, these artists created unified compositions that express the endless possibilities of Black-constructed narratives despite our fragmented society.
Photography by John Schweikert
