While the Nasher’s holdings encompass a number of works that closely correspond to the main tenets of Minimalism in the U.S., its collection also tells the story of Minimalism’s co-emergence with second-wave feminism. Central to that alternative narrative is Judy Chicago’s seminal Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks (1965), a work acquired through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisition Fund for Women Artists. The set of 12 multi-colored aluminum rectilinear shapes contrasts with the gridded, muted palette embraced by other Minimalist artists of the period. The room-size Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks was conceived as an open composition that allows the placement of each object to change and adapt in each new installation. Preceding the more explicitly feminist work Chicago has made since the mid-1970s, these early sculptures advocate for a more elastic and collaborative approach to artmaking traditionally associated with the work of women artists. 

Also included in the exhibition are several artists who emerged in the late 1960s within the context of a critique of the inherent restrictions associated with Minimalism. With women and non-Western artists at the forefront, these artists experimented with conceptual, organic, and sensuous modes of artmaking. A group of four works by Mary Ann Unger made between 1978 and 1989 share her generation’s attention to unusual and irregular forms that bridge the geometry of the grid and other systems of recurring natural shapes. Kazuko Miyamoto’s work as an artist and assistant to Sol LeWitt was complemented by her activities as a curator and organizer who expanded opportunities for women in the field. Her Female I (1977) was conceived as an ephemeral installation of cotton string and nails in the artist’s studio, drawing a correlation between artists’ and women’s often unseen labor. 

Alongside works by artists based in the United States, Open Form will feature a selection of sculpture by artists working in Latin America––Lygia Clark and Mira Schendel in Brazil, and Gego in Venezuela—where the legacy of Constructivism was a crucial source of inspiration. Included in the exhibition is a 1963 iteration of Clark’s series of Bichos, titled O?dentro?é o fora (The Inside is the Outside), a composition of twisting metal sheets with no clear front, back, interior, or exterior planes, which can be installed in various orientations.  

Building on this history, a group of contemporary artists in the Nasher’s collection continue to explore a range of materials, forms, and methods often associated with Minimalist sculpture, particularly in their explicit reference to its hallmarks of linearity, geometry, reduction, and repetition. Artists such as Lita Albuquerque, Kathryn Andrews, Munson Hunt, and Susan York exemplify the impact and legacy of their predecessors in the exhibition. Carol Bove’s Tears (2011), will be shown for the first time at the Nasher. Composed of 121 delicately beaded silver chains that hang from a translucent bar, the work creates a barely-visible planar division in the gallery that serves to draw attention to the subtle impact of other architectures.