Metropolitan Museum of Art to Mount Felix Gonzalez-Torres Survey in June
In June 2024, "The Spaces Between" will debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, marking the first significant exhibition of Felix Gonzalez-Torres in New York in over three decades. This exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, showcases more than 40 pieces across 14 galleries, under the curation of David Breslin. Notable works include "Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform)" (1991), "Untitled (Perfect Lovers)" (1997–90), and "Untitled (Revenge)" (1991). According to museum director Max Hollein, this arrangement links the artist's contributions to 5,000 years of artistic expression. Gonzalez-Torres, who passed away in 1996, created a transformative body of work shaped by the AIDS crisis, with his last major survey held at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Key facts
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present "The Spaces Between," the first major Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition in New York in over 30 years, opening next June.
- The exhibition is organized with the Art Institute of Chicago, which will simultaneously host a different Gonzalez-Torres show.
- Gonzalez-Torres was a Cuban-born American artist who died from AIDS-related complications in 1996.
- The show's title comes from a line in an Elizabeth Bishop essay that Gonzalez-Torres faxed to gallerist Andrea Rosen in 1994.
- More than 40 works spanning installation, sculpture, photography, painting, and video will be dispersed across 14 of The Met's permanent collection galleries.
- Highlights include "Untitled (Go-Go Dancing Platform)" (1991), "Untitled (Perfect Lovers)" (1997–90), and the candy pile "Untitled (Revenge)" (1991).
- Curator David Breslin said Gonzalez-Torres made a "history-changing body of work that never chose between the personal and the political."
- In 2022, the Art Institute of Chicago reinstalled "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)" (1991) with a label that omitted AIDS and Ross Laycock; in 2020, David Zwirner and Andrea Rosen restaged "'Untitled' (Fortune Cookie Corner)" (1990).
Entities
Artists
- Felix Gonzalez-Torres
- Elizabeth Bishop
- Andrea Rosen
- Max Hollein
- David Breslin
- Ross Laycock
- Barbara Kruger
- Louise Lawler
- Carrie Mae Weems
- Hans Haacke
- Ross Bleckner
Institutions
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Museo Reina Sofía
- David Zwirner
- Group Material
- Hyperallergic
Locations
- New York
- United States
- Chicago
- Madrid
- Spain
- Cuba
- Los Angeles
Sources
- Hyperallergic —
- Artsy —