Art & Object Events

In This Imperfect Present Moment is the title of a portrait by Toyin Ojih Odutola. She is one of 15 artists who live in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Cotonou/Rotterdam, Luanda/Lisbon, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and New York whose work has been brought to Seattle by local collectors who are intrigued by how these artists convey vibrant narratives that resonate across global boundaries.

American artist Margaret Kilgallen (1967–2001) died at the young age of thirty-three, just as her work was gaining recognition and prominence. She is known primarily for her association with the Bay Area Mission School—a loosely associated group of artists from the early 1990s—and for her inclusion in the exhibition Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture (2004–6). The AAM’s presentation will be Kilgallen’s first posthumous museum exhibition, and the largest presentation of her work to date since her 2005 show, In the Sweet Bye & Bye, at REDCAT, Los Angeles.

The first comprehensive survey of Sri Lankan art organized by an American museum, The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka presents some 250 works addressing nearly two millennia of Sri Lankan history.

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989), one of the most critically acclaimed yet controversial American artists of the late twentieth century, is represented in great depth in the Guggenheim’s collection. In 1993 the museum received a generous gift of approximately two hundred photographs and unique objects from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, creating one of the most comprehensive public repositories in the world of this important artist’s work. In 2019, thirty years after the artist’s death, the Guggenheim will celebrate the sustained legacy of his work with a yearlong exhibition conceived in two sequential parts in the museum’s Mapplethorpe Gallery on Tower Level 4. Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now is organized by Lauren Hinkson, Associate Curator, Collections and Susan Thompson, Associate Curator with Levi Prombaum, Curatorial Assistant, Collections.