The most comprehensive Martin Puryear survey in nearly 20 years opens at the Cleveland Museum of Art

CLEVELAND (April 9, 2026)—The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is pleased to present Martin Puryear: Nexus, a career survey of the preeminent sculptor Martin Puryear (American, b. 1941). For more than half a century, Puryear has captivated the public with works of astonishing beauty and elaborate craftsmanship whose sources of inspiration range from global cultures and social history to the natural world. Co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Martin Puryear: Nexus is the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. Assembling some 50 works from across Puryear’s career, the exhibition focuses on his use of a rich variety of materials and media—from sculptures in wood, rawhide, glass, marble, and metal, to rarely shown drawings, prints, and maquettes.

After debuting at the MFA, where it was on view in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art from September 27, 2025, through February 8, 2026, the exhibition travels to the CMA from April 12 through August 9, 2026, followed by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from September 25, 2026, through January 17, 2027. Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by an expansive and richly illustrated catalogue produced by the CMA, with distribution by Yale University Press.

“Martin Puryear is best known for his sculptures, which are startingly beautiful abstract forms. But beyond their beauty, these works invite us to see with fresh eyes the world that we inhabit—they are timeless and contemporary all at once,” reflected Emily Liebert, Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art. “Puryear’s hands have been on every sculpture that leaves his studio. The thought and care and precision lavished on each work of art by its maker is palpable—and very moving.”

Martin Puryear: Nexus reflects the artist’s singular practice, one that combines the distinctive techniques of production with the formal histories he has encountered through a lifetime of movement, research, and study. The exhibition begins with work from the early 1960s and follows Puryear’s subsequent innovations in form, material, and process. Sculpture, the medium for which Puryear is best known, is integrated with prints, drawings, and documentation of the outdoor commissions that the artist has created around the world. Rooted in new scholarship, Martin Puryear: Nexus sheds light on the ways that the artist’s unique vocabulary has been shaped by his enduring interests in global traditions of material culture, African American history, and the natural world.

The CMA has designed and published the most comprehensive catalogue to date of Puryear’s work, including essays authored by a new generation of scholars, a series of responses to individual works by thinkers and makers from a range of disciplines (many of whom are longtime interlocutors of the artist), and an illustrated chronology of exhibitions, commissions, and special projects featuring archival material that have never been published. The catalogue can be purchased online and in the CMA’s gift shop.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Self (1978): Appearing at first to be a dense solid mass, Self is light and hollow, enclosing an unseen interior volume. According to the artist, the sculpture offers “a visual notion of the self rather than any particular self—the self as a secret entity, a secret hidden place.” Self was assembled piece by piece through cold molding, a technique that involves affixing layers of flexible strips of wood around temporary frames. Puryear learned cold molding through boatbuilding and has used the technique in some of his most celebrated works, including Lever #1 (1988–89), Alien Huddle (1993–95), and Looking Askance (2023), on view in this exhibition.
   
• Night and Day (1984): A rarely exhibited work, Night and Day reflects Puryear’s enduring interest in natural manifestations of black and white. As a child, through John James Audubon’s (1785–1851) famous folios Birds of America, Puryear discovered two depictions of the same species of gyrfalcon, one white and one black. The range in plumage that caught Puryear’s attention is determined by each bird population’s particular habitat among the Arctic regions. Beside the wall sculpture’s division into two connected halves, one black and one white, Night and Day’s sweeping form might even be interpreted as a bird’s line of flight.
   
• On the Tundra (1986): On the Tundra is inspired by the gyrfalcon, which has fascinated Puryear since he discovered it as a child in Birds of America by John James Audubon (1785–1851). He was struck by Audubon’s renderings of the same species of gyrfalcon, one white and one black. The contrast in plumage is determined by each bird population’s particular habitat in the Arctic regions. “I made a connection about human racial difference by way of these species,” Puryear said. He continued studying gyrfalcons into adulthood, becoming a trained falconer. Puryear made On the Tundra in solid cast iron, giving it added weight and solidity. He returned to this form in 2022, creating an iteration of the dark sculpture in white marble, On the Tundra (Winter).
   
• Alien Huddle (1993–95): Puryear constructed Alien Huddle’s three interlocking spheres by attaching one strip of wood to the next around a hollow core. He learned this technique, called cold molding, by studying boatbuilding techniques. Composed with the artist’s characteristic precision, the appearance of Alien Huddle varies depending on the viewer’s position and perspective in relation to the work—as one moves around the work, different spheres come in and out of visibility, revealing the many ideas a single object can inspire.
   
• Big Phrygian (2010–14): This sculpture is the most dramatic representation of Puryear’s sustained engagement with the form and symbolic power of the Phrygian cap. The headdress, which initially signified formerly enslaved people in ancient Rome, later became a symbol of resistance to persecution during the French and American Revolutions. Puryear notes the dual nature of the shape of the cap, which sweeps up in a graceful wavelike form before changing course to curl and flop in on itself. Sculpted into soft angles and fleshlike, curving forms, Big Phrygian exudes a lifelike quality.
   
• Hibernian Testosterone (2018): This sculpture reproduces in full scale the 12-footwide antlers of the Irish elk, an extinct species of deer common during the Ice Age. Scientists believe its antlers—which likely evolved to help the species survive combat and demonstrate sexual prowess, and whose growth was propelled by testosterone—contributed to its extinction, as they eventually became too heavy to hold up. In Hibernian Testosterone, Puryear gives form to this parable-like history from the animal kingdom, which seems to carry a lesson. This work debuted at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, where Puryear represented the United States.
   
• Aso Oke (2019): To create Aso Oke, Martin Puryear constructed the work in rattan (palm stems) and twine, and then cast it in bronze. The sculpture’s form is inspired by the fila gobi, a ceremonial cap worn by Yoruba men of Nigeria. The sculpture’s title and open latticework refer to a prestigious handwoven fabric made by the Yoruba people. Aso Oke was first exhibited in Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà, the artist’s presentation in the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019.
   
• A Column for Sally Hemings (2021): One of Martin Puryear’s few indoor site-specific sculptures, A Column for Sally Hemings, was made when the artist represented the United States in the 2019 Venice Biennale’s American pavilion. The title refers to Sally Hemings (1773–1835), the Black woman who was enslaved by president Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) with whom she also had at least six children. Responding to the American pavilion’s architecture, which was modeled on Monticello—Jefferson’s Palladian-inspired primary residence and plantation—the sculpture’s base with vertical flutes echoes the Doric columns in the pavilion entrance. Thrust into this sleek marble form is a cast-iron stake and a shackle. This jarring point of contact between contradictory forms and materials expresses the complexities embedded in the history the work evokes.

Martin Puryear: Nexus also features a film that documents Puryear’s most recent outdoor work, Lookout (2023), a permanent site-specific commission for the Storm King Art Center. In Cleveland and Atlanta, additional film footage as well as prints, drawings, and documentation of other public commissions are also on view, demonstrating how Puryear extends his studio practice into the public realm and maintains his commitment to craft and concept on a monumental scale.

Co-organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Martin Puryear: Nexus is the first substantial survey of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. The exhibition, which debuted at the MFA Boston in fall 2025, travels to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta after the CMA.

The exhibition is co-curated by Emily Liebert, Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art and chair of art of the Americas and modern and contemporary art, the Cleveland Museum of Art; and Reto Thüring, head of culture at the Foundation for Art, Culture, and History in Winterthur, Switzerland, and former Beal Family Chair, department of contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; with Gabriella Shypula, Lee and Mary Carter Director’s Research Fellow, the Cleveland Museum of Art. The MFA’s presentation is organized by Ian Alteveer, Beal Family Chair, department of contemporary art with Daisy Alejandre, curatorial assistant, contemporary art. The High’s presentation is organized by Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Complementary Programs

Visitors are invited to explore Puryear’s work further through a selection of public programs at the CMA:

Martin Puryear: Reflections in Movement, Music, and Words

Friday, May 8, 2026, 7:30–9:00 p.m.

Gartner Auditorium, Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center 
Free; Ticket Required

New York classical-radio personality and Cleveland native Terrance McKnight curates an evening of music, dance, and poetry, which coincides with the works on display in Martin Puryear: Nexus. McKnight is joined by internationally acclaimed pianist/composer Donal Fox, balafon master Famoro Dioubaté, and others. 

McKnight is a commentator, curator, writer, pianist, storyteller, and actor and the weekday afternoon and evening host for WQXR radio station in New York. It is his commitment to music and community building, combined with his respect for his subject matter, that audiences find riveting and memory making.

Recent notable projects include Handel: Made in America, which McKnight cocreated and performed in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2024; Langston & Beethoven: Black & Proud, a live show he created and performed in 2023, which combined the poetry of Langston Hughes, traditional and contemporary chamber music works, and storytelling, and which toured and presented at Lincoln Center’s Sidewalk Studio; Every Voice, his 2023 podcast series for WQXR that investigated representations of Blackness in opera; and All Ears with Terrance McKnight, which received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award.

McKnight has hosted concerts for the Atlanta Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts. He has given a keynote address at the 2022 Music Teachers National Association Conference and participated in the Bang on a Can Summer Festival Journalism Symposium in 2022 and 2023. He has curated a series of concerts and audio tours in association with the 2019 exhibition Charles White: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

McKnight currently serves on the board of MacDowell, is the artistic advisor to the Harlem Chamber Players, and is a former member of the Artistic Council for the Hermitage Artist Retreat.

The views expressed by performers during this event are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Keithley Symposium: Thinking Through “Martin Puryear: Nexus”

Saturday, May 30, 2026, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. 

Gartner Auditorium, Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center 
Free; Ticket Required

art has a remarkable capacity to open up questions across media and disciplines. On the occasion of the artist’s career survey Martin Puryear: Nexus, this symposium treats his work as a portal to think through a range of practices, materials, and traditions that are central to global art of our time. The panel’s topics are rooted in key concepts that stem from the forms and themes, materials and processes, on view in Martin Puryear: Nexus. In this sense, the symposium offers a variety of entry points into the exhibition, to speak to a range of audiences. The panels are composed of scholars, curators, and artists from Cleveland and beyond. 

The symposium schedule with information on speakers is forthcoming. 

Note that this is an in-person event and will not be recorded.

Martin Puryear Tours

Weekly on Saturdays and Sundays, 1:00–2:00 p.m. Saturday, April 11, 2026, through Sunday, July 26, 2026

Ames Family Atrium 
Free; Ticket Required

Join us for a docent-guided tour of Martin Puryear: Nexus, the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. Developed in close collaboration with Puryear himself, this career-spanning survey traces his innovations from the 1960s to the present, featuring iconic sculptures alongside never-before-seen pieces, prints, and drawings. Your guide illuminates how Puryear’s elegant visual vocabulary is shaped by global material traditions, African American history, and the natural world, offering a deep dive into the expressive power of one of our most influential contemporary artists.

Tours meet their docent at the information desk in the Ames Family Atrium. 

To schedule private tours for adult groups of 10 or more, please contact grouptours@clevelandart.org or call 216-707-2752.

There are no tours on Saturday, July 4—the museum is closed in observance of Independence Day.

Exhibition Catalogue

Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by an expansive and richly illustrated catalogue. Designed and published by the Cleveland Museum of Art, and distributed by Yale University Press, the publication is anchored by five essays authored by a new generation of scholars: Rizvana Bradley, Joan Kee, Emily Liebert, Michelle Millar Fisher, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi.

Additional perspectives enter the book through series of responses to individual works, contributed by thinkers and makers from a range of disciplines, many of whom are longtime interlocutors of the artist. They include: Alex Da Corte, Thelma Golden, Maya Lin, Kerry James Marshall, Julia Phillips, Charles Ray, and Billie Tsien. Alongside these contemporary perspectives, the catalogue features archival materials that have never before been published.

About Martin Puryear

Over the last five decades Martin Puryear has created a body of work based on abstract organic forms rich with psychological, cultural, and historical references. His labor-intensive sculptures are made by hand at his studio in upstate New York. They combine practices adapted from many different traditions, including wood carving, joinery, and boat building, as well as more recent technology. As a student, Puryear studied ornithology, falconry, and archery, and in the 1960s he volunteered with the Peace Corps in west Africa, where he educated himself in the region’s Indigenous crafts. Since then, he has continued to travel extensively, observing a range of cultures and their unique approaches to object making. “I think there are a number of levels at which my work can be dealt with and appreciated,” he has said. “It gives me pleasure to feel there’s a level that doesn’t require knowledge of or immersion in the aesthetic of a given time or place.”

Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. His first one-person exhibition took place in 1968, and since then he has exhibited throughout the world, including public commissions in Europe, Asia, and the US. His work was featured in Documenta 9, and in 1989 he represented the US at the Bienal de São Paulo, where he was awarded the festival’s Grand Prize. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a survey of his work, which traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. In 2015, the Art Institute of Chicago organized an exhibition of 50 years of his works on paper, which traveled to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Puryear received a MacArthur Foundation award in 1989 and a National Medal of Arts from President Obama in 2011. In 2019, he represented the US at the 58th Venice Biennale. His recent commissions include outdoor works at Madison Square Park, the Storm King Art Center, and the Deichman Library in Oslo.

Presented by

Principal support is provided by the late Agnes Gund. Generous support is provided by the Gottlob family in loving memory of Milford Gottlob, MD and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Kenneth H. Kirtz and family.

All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, the John and Jeanette Walton Exhibition Fund, and Margaret and Loyal Wilson. Major annual support is provided by the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm and the Frankino-Dodero Family Fund for Exhibitions Endowment. Generous annual support is provided by two anonymous donors, Gini and Randy Barbato, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Gail and Bill Calfee, the Leigh H. Carter family, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Mary and Jim Conway, Joseph and Susan Corsaro, Ron and Cheryl Davis, Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Florence Kahane Goodman, Martha H. and Steven M. Hale, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Linda Harper, Robin Heiser, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., the estate of Walter and

Jean Kalberer, Robert M. Kaye, Jane and Doug Kern, the late Mrs. Nancy M. Lavelle, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Roy Minoff Family Fund, Lu Anne and the late Carl Morrison, Mrs. Peta and the late Dr. Roland Moskowitz, Jeffrey Mostade and Eric Nilson and Varun Shetty, Sarah Nash, Courtney and Michael Novak, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Dr. Nicholas and Anne Ogan, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, Henry Ott-Hansen, the Pickering Foundation, Frank and Fran Porter, Christine Fae Powell, Peter and Julie Raskind, Michael and Cindy Resch, Marguerite and James Rigby, in memory of Dee Schafer, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, Elizabeth and Tim Sheeler, Saundra K. Stemen, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia Woods and David Osage.

Principal support for the exhibition catalogue is provided by the Glenstone Foundation.