Guggenheim New York Announces 2024 Schedule of Exhibitions

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s is the first North American museum exhibition dedicated to Korean Experimental art (silheom misul) and its artists, whose radical approach to materials and process produced some of the most significant avant-garde practices of the twentieth century. It features approximately eighty works across various mediums, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, installation, and film, most of which are being presented for the first time to an international audience.

This historic presentation examines artistic production from an era of remarkable transformation in South Korea, when young artists who came of age in the decades following the Korean War reflected and responded to the changing socioeconomic, political, and material conditions that accompanied the nation’s rapid urbanization and modernization.

Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s is co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. The exhibition is cocurated by Kyung An, Associate Curator, Asian Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York, and Kang Soojung, Senior Curator, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.

Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility

Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility will present works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures, thus positioning them at the “edge of visibility.” In this art context, the common phrase going dark is understood as a tactic whereby artists visually conceal the body to explore a key tension in contemporary society: the desire to be seen and the desire to be hidden from sight.

Occupying the Guggenheim Museum’s iconic rotunda, Going Dark presents more than 100 works by a group of 28 artists, the majority of whom are Black and more than half of whom are women. While most of the works date from the 1980s to the present, a selection of them were created in the 1960s and ’70s by three iconic artists—David Hammons, Faith Ringgold, and Charles White—suggesting that the development of Conceptual art during these decades launched new pathways of expression that laid the groundwork for contemporary artists tackling the “edge of visibility” today.

Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility is organized by Ashley James, Associate Curator, Contemporary Art, with Faith Hunter, Curatorial Assistant.

By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection

One of the most salient features of modern and contemporary art is the tendency, and desire, to abandon traditional creative practice, enacting both literal and figurative experimentations beyond the studio. In spring of 2024, the Guggenheim Museum will present By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection, an exhibition that will examine artists on the move, demonstrating how saturated contemporary art has become with “extramural” modes of thinking and working. From the twentieth century onward, especially after World War II, artists became more invested in the potentials of the world outside. Some artists located their inspiration in the street rather than in the academy; others depicted the responsibility of encapsulating memory and identity in a mobile form; while others pushed the boundaries of traditional art materials. The results challenge taste and even the neat system of medium categorization that specifies sculpture versus object versus installation.

Spanning the 1960s to the present day, the exhibition will offer a suite of artworks from the museum’s permanent collection and is particularly inspired by a recent gift from the D.Daskalopoulos Collection. Major names from the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and 1970s like Jannis Kounellis and Mario Merz will share the stage with contemporary figures, such as Mona Hatoum, Rashid Johnson, and Senga Nengudi. Their makings are grounded in a feeling of immanence, a full sensory experience, and an awareness of place, even if, at times, the artist seeks to make an escape elsewhere.

By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection is organized by Naomi Beckwith, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator.

A Year with Children 2024

A Year with Children 2024 will feature works created by students in grades two through six participating in Learning Through Art (LTA), the Guggenheim’s artist-in-residence program in New York City public schools. LTA partners teaching artists with classroom educators in each of the city’s five boroughs to design projects that explore art and ideas related to their courses. In its fifty-third year, the program fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and ongoing collaborative investigation rooted in curricula that encourages LTA students to embark on an extended examination of processes, materials, and techniques to express their artistic visions.

A Year with Children 2024 is organized by Amy Boyle, Director of School, Youth, and Family Programs and Michelle Wohlgemuth Cooper, Manager, School Partnerships.

Jenny Holzer

In May of 2024, the Guggenheim New York will present a reimagination of Jenny Holzer’s 1989 landmark installation at the Guggenheim. The new manifestation of Holzer’s electronic sign extends and builds upon the artist’s vision from thirty-five years earlier, climbing all six ramps of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda to the building’s apex. The site-specific work will transform the building with a display of scrolling texts from her earliest series of Truisms to more recent experiments with language generated by artificial intelligence. Holzer’s use of the written word throughout her career has long captivated audiences around the world. This solo exhibition will highlight some of the most pressing issues of our time, offering audiences the opportunity to encounter the extraordinary, the political, the mundane, and the provocative through the artist’s pioneering approach to the medium of language.

Jenny Holzer is organized by Lauren Hinkson, Associate Curator for Collections. Conservation research and treatment of Jenny Holzer’s Installation for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1989/2024) is led by Lena Stringari, Deputy Director and Andrew W. Mellon Chief Conservator, and Agathe Jarczyk, Associate Time-Based Media Conservator.

Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930

In the fall of 2024, the Guggenheim New York will present Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930, the first in-depth examination of the Orphist avant-garde. Featuring around 100 artworks installed on five levels of the museum’s spiral rotunda, the exhibition will historically situate this complex movement, tracing its roots, addressing its multidisciplinary reach, and considering its transnational reverberations.

Orphism emerged in Paris among a cosmopolitan group of artists in the early 1910s, when the changes and innovations engendered by modernity were radically altering conceptions of time and space—and how people lived. Poet Guillaume Apollinaire coined the term itself in 1912 to describe physically and spiritually transcendent art. He based his concept on the Greek mythological poet and musician Orpheus. Artists connected to Orphism engaged with ideas of simultaneity, exploring dynamic compositions that often encompass disks of vibrant color and evoke multisensory experiences. Looking to sources affiliated with the Neo-Impressionists and the Blue Rider group, Orphist practitioners oscillated between investigations into color theory and its effects, and the transformative possibilities of color, form, and motion in art. When pushed to its limits, Orphism meant total abstraction. Selected works by Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Mainie Jellett, František Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, among others, and by the Synchromists Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, will be included in the presentation.

Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930 is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Director of Collections and Senior Curator, and Vivien Greene, Senior Curator, 19th- and Early 20th-Century Art.

The Thannhauser Collection

The Thannhauser Collection, formed by the German-Jewish art dealer and collector Justin K. Thannhauser, includes important late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings, works on paper, and sculpture by groundbreaking artists such as Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet, and Vincent van Gogh. It was during this critical period—as artists sought to liberate art from academic genres and introduce contemporary subject matter—that the avant-garde investigated novel materials and methods, setting the stage for the development of radical new styles.

The Thannhauser Collection is organized by Megan Fontanella, Curator, Modern Art and Provenance.

About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The international constellation of museums includes the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. An architectural icon and “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is now among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. To learn more about the museum and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit guggenheim.org.

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