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Harry Smith exhibition

Institution
Whitney Museum of American Art
Grant Cycle
Fall 2022
Amount
$100,000
Type of Grant
Exhibition Support
Website
whitney.org/ ↗
Harry Smith, Untitled, c. 1950 1951. Mixed media on board, 23 1⁄2 x 22 3⁄4 in. (59.7 x 60.3 cm). Collection of the Harry Smith Archives Los Angeles.
Harry Smith, Tree of Life in the Four Worlds, 1954. Four color screen print. 25 x 4 7/8 in. (63.5 x 12.4 cm). Collection of the Harry Smith Archives, Los Angeles.
Harry Smith, Untitled, October 19, 1951. Ink, watercolor, and tempera on paper. 34 × 27 1/2in. (86.4 × 69.9 cm). Collection of Raymond Foye Woodstock, NY.
Harry Smith, Aleph (Inkweed Studios), c. 1953. Ink on paper. 7 x 5 in. (17.8 x 12.7 cm). Collection of Raymond Foye, Woodstock, NY.
Harry Smith, Untitled (Study for Inkweed Studios greeting card), c. 1953. India ink on scratchboard. 8 x 6 in. (20 x 15 cm). Collection of Raymond Foye Woodstock, NY.

In the fall of 2023, the Whitney Museum of American Art will open Harry Smith, the first solo exhibition of works by the artist, filmmaker and ethnographer. This exhibition introduces Smith’s life and work within a museum setting for the first time and includes paintings, drawings, experimental films, designs, and examples of Smith’s collecting alongside his historic folk music collection. Seen throughout this hybrid display of art and ephemera are signs of the esoteric, fantastic, and alternative cosmologies basic to Smith’s view of culture. The exhibition proposes new ways to experience diverse strains of 20th-century American cultural histories.

Throughout his life, Harry Smith (1923–1991) collected and recorded the sounds, images, artifacts, and customs of creative communities previously unseen by mainstream society. Though his work garnered a cult-like following that continues to reverberate among artists, filmmakers, and musicians, Smith lived and practiced outside of conventional institutions and capitalist structures, and much of his work has been lost. The exhibition will bring to life the invisible history of Smith’s practice and expose audiences to his unorthodox mode of cultural engagement and production that nevertheless remains relevant and influential today.

The exhibition is co-organized by The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, where a version of the project will open in November 2024. The exhibition is curated by artist Carol Bove; Dan Byers, the John R. and Barbara Robinson Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts; Rani Singh, Director of the Harry Smith Archives; Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art; with Kelly Long, Senior Curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

See Also

Foundation

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Announces Fall 2022 Grantees

12 January 2023

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer, Untitled (Valora tu mentira americana) (detail), 2018. Hurricane ravaged wooden electric post with statehood propaganda, 116 × 118 × 122 in. Private collection; courtesy the artist and Embajada, San Juan
Exhibition Support

no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria
Whitney Museum of American Art
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Foundation

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Announces Spring 2020 Grantees

24 June 2020

Foundation

The Warhol Foundation Announces Spring 2019 Grants

17 July 2019

Julie Mehretu
, “Haka (and Riot),” 2019. 
Ink and Acrylic on Canvas
144 x 180 inches
Exhibition Support

Julie Mehretu
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, NY

Foundation

Warhol Foundation Announces Spring 2018 Grants

10 July 2018

1969

Andy Warhol launches Interview magazine.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
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