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RALEIGH, N.C. — The N.C. Museum of Art announces upcoming exhibitions of photography, painting, and sculpture for fall 2018 through fall 2019.

Opening October 6, 2018, Candida Höfer in Mexico offers a glimpse into the culture and history of Mexico with 25 photographs of some of the country’s most dramatic interior architecture. Beginning October 13, 2018, The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art showcases the bright, airy work of O’Keeffe alongside works by 20 emerging contemporary artists that share themes from her modernist style. In 2019 the NCMA hosts South African artist Wim Botha’s first solo exhibition in the United States, opening in April, followed in October by an exhibition featuring works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Candida Höfer in Mexico
October 6, 2018–January 6, 2019

For decades photographer Candida Höfer (German, born 1944) has made “portraits” of iconic buildings around the world, including the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, La Scala in Milan, Villa Borghese in Rome, and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Höfer’s technical mastery of composition, light, and symmetry offers viewers a glimpse beneath the surface, toward the heart and character of each place, in visually stunning, monumentally scaled photographs of the world’s great architecture.

In 2015 Höfer turned her camera, and her interest, toward Mexico. This exhibition features 25 large-format photographs of magnificent interiors of libraries, convents, theaters, churches, and museums throughout Mexico. For Höfer these structures encapsulate the essence of Mexican culture, covering an impressive timeline of 600 years from the 16th century to the 21st.

The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art
October 13, 2018–January 20, 2019

Georgia O’Keeffe pioneered revolutionary ways of visually interpreting the world, leaving a lasting legacy for artists working today. This innovative exhibition brings together a significant group of O’Keeffe’s works as the centerpiece of an exploration of her continued force as a touchstone for contemporary art. Alongside paintings and sculpture by this founder of American modernism, viewers encounter works by emerging artists that evoke and expand upon O’Keeffe’s enchanting artistic language.

Enormous flowers, luscious color, airy compositions full of light, and clean forms that verge on abstraction: these hallmarks of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings are seen anew through their influence on artists working today. The Beyond presents a conversation between some of O’Keeffe’s most important works and the work of 20 emerging artists, selected for their individual approaches to some of O’Keeffe’s powerful themes, including flowers, bodies, still lifes, skyscrapers, desert landscapes, and the delicate interplay between realism and abstraction. The Beyond introduces audiences to a new generation of American artists, providing a fresh look at O’Keeffe through the lens of contemporary art.

Wim Botha: Still Life with Discontent
April 13–August 4, 2019

Wim Botha: Still Life with Discontent is presented in conjunction with 21c Museum Hotel, Durham, N.C. This partnership—the second between the NCMA and 21c—showcases Botha’s art simultaneously in two separate spaces, including site-specific works created especially for this show. We hope that this double exhibition provides viewers with the opportunity to travel between our two institutions and enjoy this groundbreaking artist’s work in two vastly different spaces and share in the expanse of the arts community in the Triangle.

South African artist Wim Botha’s works are a study in contrasts: seductive yet displeasing, sacred yet profane, heavy yet light, and stable yet unsettled. Through his varying materials and subject matter, Botha explores issues of history, status, power, and religion with a focus on Western art history. In his sculptures and site-specific installations, he channels traditional sculptural busts as well as motifs from baroque art, and he frequently engages with specific monuments (the ancient sculpture Laocoön and His Sons and Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà are prime examples). Botha’s take on classical or conventional art history, however, is blurred, deconstructed, or fractured. Though his works refer to the original meaning of a work of art, that meaning is equally subverted. All told, Botha’s intellectually stimulating works are questions in themselves, providing viewers with fodder for conversation and surprising juxtapositions for further exploration.

This collaboration between the NCMA and 21c marks the first comprehensive exhibition of Botha’s works in North America.

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Masterpieces of Modern Mexico
from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection
October 26-January 19, 2020

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Masterpieces of Modern Mexico from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection presents the paintings of two icons of the 20th century. Few artists have captured the public's imagination with the force of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907–54) and her husband, the Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957). The myths that surrounded them in their lifetime arose not only from their significant bodies of work, but also from their friendships (and conflicts) with leading political figures and their passionate, tempestuous personal relationships.

Kahlo and Rivera’s works are varied in scope and inspiration: she is best-known for her self-portraits, while he worked as a large-scale muralist in Mexico and the United States. Kahlo’s work is deeply personal, often depicting her own dreams, painful personal experiences, and affinity with Mexican culture, while Rivera’s pursues larger looks at history and cultural revolution. Both artists forged the way for Mexican art as a significant element of the 20th century and beyond.

Similarly important is the legacy of two of Kahlo and Rivera’s patrons, Jacques and Natasha Gelman. The Gelmans became Mexican citizens in 1942 and began amassing Mexican art, sustaining a growing collection of Mexican modernists, like Kahlo and Rivera (with whom they became close friends), as well as their compatriots Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others. Their unparalleled collection shows the richness of Mexican art through painting, drawing, photography, and film.

Exhibition Credit Information:

• Candida Höfer in Mexico is organized by Galería OMR in recognition of the Mexico-Germany Dual Year. Generous support is provided by the Institut-Goethe Mexico and the Secretaría de Cultura of Mexico. Additional support is provided by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Secretaría de Cultura of the State of Jalisco, the Instituto Estatal de Cultura of the State of Guanajuato, the Consejo Estatal para la Cultura of the State of Puebla, UBS México.
• The Beyond: Georgia O’Keefe and Contemporary Art is organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Support for the national tour is provided by Helen Porter and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
• Wim Botha: Still Life with Discontent is organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, and 21c Museum Hotels, Durham.
• Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection is organized by MondoMostre and the Vergel Foundation.
• All exhibitions are made possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions. Research for this exhibition was made possible by Ann and Jim Goodnight/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.

About the North Carolina Museum of Art:
The North Carolina Museum of Art’s permanent collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the present, making the institution one of the premier art museums in the South. The Museum’s collection provides educational, aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural experiences for the citizens of North Carolina and beyond. The 164-acre Museum Park showcases the connection between art and nature through site-specific works of environmental art. The Museum offers changing national touring exhibitions, classes, lectures, family activities, films, and concerts.

The Museum opened West Building, home to the permanent collection, in 2010. The North Carolina Museum of Art, Lawrence J. Wheeler, director, is located at 2110 Blue Ridge Road in Raleigh. It is the art museum of the State of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, governor, and an agency of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Susi Hamilton, secretary.

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CONTACT:

Kat Harding
(919) 664-6795
kharding@ncartmuseum.org