Museum Attention Is Building Around These Artists. Will the Canon Follow?
A new cluster of contemporary artists is appearing across museums and biennials with unusual frequency, even as many of them have not yet received the kind of major U.S. retrospective that often cements a lasting place in art history. The pattern suggests a transitional moment: artists are being collected, exhibited, and interpreted widely, but not always fully canonized.
Martine Gutierrez is one of the clearest examples. Her staged photographs, which fold fashion and pop imagery into reflections on transgender identity and Indigenous heritage, are currently visible in the Whitney Biennial, five other June group shows, and the Guggenheim New York’s “Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now.” She has also just opened a solo exhibition in Marseille, France, titled “Martine Gutierrez: Wunderkind.” Even so, she has not yet had a major survey in the United States.
Stephanie Syjuco, born in the Philippines and based in Oakland, is in a similar position. Her work, which examines photography as a tool of domination, includes her largest-ever wall piece at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and an appearance in “A Nation of Artists” in Philadelphia. Her 2024 exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, “After/Images,” was her most substantial presentation to date.
Other artists are receiving multiple institutional spotlights at once. Ali Banisadr is part of the Buffalo AKG’s first-ever collection intervention and has a survey, “Ali Banisadr: The Alchemist,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. Mike Cloud has major presentations at the Hammer Museum and the MCA Chicago. Martine Syms has a film installation at the Saint Louis Art Museum and a long-term installation at the Walker Art Center, while Lucy Raven’s experimental films are on view at ICA Boston and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.
The same dynamic is visible in glass. Einar and Jamex de la Torre are featured in multiple museum shows, alongside their touring retrospective “Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective,” now at the Wichita Art Museum. Dale Chihuly has a large presentation at Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, and Toots Zynsky is appearing in several glass-focused exhibitions. Red Grooms, meanwhile, recently closed “Ruckus, Manhattan” at the Brooklyn Museum and is also represented at the Alaska State Museum, Sioux City Art Museum, Morgan Library & Museum, and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Taken together, these exhibitions point to a familiar art-world threshold: visibility first, retrospective later. The artists now circulating through museums may be the ones whose place in the canon is decided next.
