Mavis Pusey Show for Hammer
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| Mavis Pusey, Dejygea, 1970. Birmingham Museum of Art |
The Hammer Museum will present "Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images," an exhibition now at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Jamaican-born Pusey (1928–2019) created scintillating hard-edge abstractions inspired by Manhattan construction sites. She moved to rural Virginia in 1988 and was largely forgotten by the time of her death. In the past decade curators and gallerists have rediscovered Pusey's art and biography. Four paintings were included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, and the Philadelphia show is getting national buzz.
After the Hammer presentation in fall 2026, the show will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2027.
Comments
Next month I'm spending a week in Philadelphia, studying the museum collections. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia is now on my list.
> “Realms of the Dharma” will
> remain on view for a year,
> closing in July 2026. That
> means LACMA’s Buddhist
> masterworks won’t be in the
> Geffen building when it
> debuts in April next year, or
> anytime soon after that.
> (Architect Peter Zumthor is
> testing paint glazes for
> some of the Geffen’s all-
> concrete walls, although
> a final decision on whether
> to add color has not been
> made.)
The question of hidden (or obscure talent) like a Pusey now being given more attention (NY Times: "Mavis Pusey was a pioneer of Black abstraction...") intersects with the question of whether various works in the Lucas Museum should (or shouldn't) be displayed late in the game (in 2026 versus, say 1973) in a major public museum.
Also, is "black abstraction" somehow different from "white abstraction," "Asian abstraction" or "Latino abstraction?" So will the curators of LACMA want to show Pusey's works not in the Broad wing, but in the gallery of African art (ie, the continent and the age of Benin, etc), presumably somewhere in the future Geffen building?
Speaking of the Geffen (and paint glazes), will the look of a lot of hard gray concrete end up looking like way too much hard gray concrete? Another museum I've always thought of as being architecturally themed to concrete, the Kimbell in metro Dallas, actually has interiors that are very much not patterned the way the Geffen's presumably will be.
Also, "or anytime soon after that" (eg, of older Asian art) means exactly what? That Michael Govan and his crew will set aside even more square footage in the already reduced or compromised exhibit spaces of the Zumthor building for contemporary art?
Moreover, stone or steel sculptures should be at least one medium not hurt by exposure to sunlight pouring into endless rows of windows.
No one wants to engage with defacto-contemporary-museum guy.
BTW, did you know that LACMA is a "...de facto museum of contemporary art, but frankly...not a very good one"?