A new edition of Simone Leigh’s monumental sculpture Sentinel (2022), one of the showstoppers of the artist’s historic U.S. pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, has entered the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
It is the first piece in the institution’s collection by Leigh, who was the first Black woman artist to represent the U.S. at the biennale. There, she also won the Golden Lion for best participant for her work in the central exhibition, “The Milk of Dreams,” curated by Cecilia Alemani.
An elegantly elongated black bronze sculpture that recalls both an architectural column and an abstracted female form, as well as a traditional African power figure, Sentinel bears two of the artist’s signature elements. The statue’s head is vessel-like, in the shape of a bowl, and faceless, suggesting both labor and consumption of the body, as well as the historical invisibility of Black women.
The Sentinel has also become a recurring motif in Leigh’s work. A smaller, similar work, Sentinel IV, is part of the collection of the University of Texas at Austin, while Sentinel (Mami Wata), in which a snake is coiled around the body, has been on view at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, since last fall.
Simone Leigh, Sentinel (2022). Photo by Timothy Schenck, courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, ©Simone Leigh.
“We are thrilled to bring this exceptional work by one of America’s greatest living artists into the collection of the National Gallery of Art,” NGA director Kaywin Feldman said of the sculpture’s acquisition in a statement. “Sentinel will stand tall in the East Building’s spacious atrium, a commanding contemporary presence among other monumental works of sculpture by Alexander Calder, Anthony Caro, Isamu Noguchi, and Richard Serra.”
The museum was able to purchase the towering artwork, which stands over 16 feet tall, thanks to a gift from Maryland’s Glenstone Foundation, founded by billionaire art collectors Emily and Mitchell Rales. It will go on view at the museum in September.
Simone Leigh, Sentinel (2022). Rendering of future installation of the work in the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Atrium. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Leigh’s first museum survey, featuring many of her works from the Venice exhibition, is Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, which commissioned her biennale pavilion.
The touring exhibition will travel to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and to Los Angeles for a joint presentation at the LACMA and the California African American Museum.
Ahead of the National Gallery installation, Leigh will participate in “Completa,” a program at the museum on August 6 featuring a conversation between Leigh and Yasmina Price, a PhD candidate at Yale, moderated by event curator Greg de Cuir Jr., cofounder and artistic director of the Kinopravda Institute in Belgrade.
Simone Leigh, Façade (2022). Photo by Timothy Schenck, courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, ©Simone Leigh.
Born in Chicago in 1967, Leigh draws on feminism, postcolonial theory, and ethnography to create work about race and the female body. Her salt-glazed ceramic and bronze sculptures are influenced not only by African art history but by Southern Americana and early African American folk art.
Leigh’s work is in the collections of institutions including the ICA Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The winner of the 2018 Hugo Boss Prize, Leigh has had New York solo exhibitions with the Guggenheim, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Kitchen, the New Museum, and Weeksville Heritage Center with Creative Time.
“Simone Leigh” is on view at the ICA, Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston, Massachusetts, April 6–September 4, 2023. It will travel to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Independence Avenue and 7th Street, Washington, D.C., November 3, 2023–March 3, 2024, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, and the California African American Museum, Exposition Park, 600 State Drive, Los Angeles, California, June 2024–January, 2025.
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