Martin Puryear: Nexus
- Special Exhibition
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall224B Video
About The Exhibition
The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, co-organize the most comprehensive exhibition of Martin Puryear’s (American, born 1941) career in nearly two decades. Following their presentations, Martin Puryear: Nexus travels to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Developed in close collaboration with Puryear, this exhibition introduces new audiences to one of the most celebrated and influential artists of our time.
Puryear’s singular work across mediums illuminates the expressive potential for abstraction in the present moment. Martin Puryear: Nexus begins with work from the early 1960s and follows the artist’s innovations in form, material, and process since then. Visitors encounter new works that make their first appearance in this show, alongside sculptures that are iconic and those that have not been exhibited publicly in decades. 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.
Martin Puryear: Nexus highlights the global histories that have inspired Puryear’s practice, offering a fresh and timely perspective on his impactful body of work. Puryear’s art is renowned for its elegance and beauty. While accentuating the work’s visual allure, this exhibition and its accompanying catalogue look beyond form. The exhibition’s interpretive frame, rooted in new scholarship, sheds light on the ways that the artist’s unique visual vocabulary has been shaped by his enduring interests in global traditions of material culture, African American history, and the natural world.
Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by an expansive and richly illustrated catalogue. Designed and published by the Cleveland Museum of Art, with distribution by Yale University Press, this 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 a 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, including Nairy Baghramian, Alex Da Corte, Thelma Golden, Tom Joyce, Maya Lin, Kerry James Marshall, Pam Paulson, Julia Phillips, Charles Ray, and Billie Tsien. Alongside these contemporary perspectives, the catalogue features archival materials that have never been published.
Featured Art
Sponsors
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, Mrs. Nancy M. Lavelle, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Lu Anne and the late Carl Morrison, Peta 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, Christine Fae Powell, Peter and Julie Raskind, Michael and Cindy Resch, Marguerite and James Rigby, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, 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.
