Director’s Letter
Dear Friends,
At the Nasher Sculpture Center, as at most museums, we go to great lengths to show works of art to advantage. Every element of display is carefully considered and adjusted to make the art look its best. Though I wouldn’t have it any other way, I’ll confess that the pristine, idealized conditions we create for works in our care can at times contrast markedly with the environments for which they were originally conceived and the settings into which they were first introduced. By privileging the display of works as independent, self-sufficient objects, do we at times compromise our understanding of their true import?
These musings are occasioned by the work of our 2023 Nasher Prize Laureate, Senga Nengudi. Now in her 79th year, Nengudi has produced an extensive and remarkably varied oeuvre that includes sculpture in a wide range of materials, installations, film and video, photography, painting, and performance. While she has produced numerous works for art galleries and museums—the most traditional of art spaces—it may well be that her most influential works are those she made for decidedly unconventional public spaces like the freeway underpass in Los Angeles that served as the setting for her legendary installation/performance, Ceremony for Freeway Fets, 1978. On that occasion, Nengudi worked with other artists, dancers, and musicians, creating a Gesamtkunstwerk that, though it now exists only in documentation, continues to inspire countless artists.
Indeed, as potent and compelling are the sculptural objects that Nengudi has produced (and continues to produce) over the course of her career, it is also her way of working, her openness to a wide range of art forms, her commitment to collaboration, that has rendered her so extraordinarily influential. Working with, and spurring the work of an extended, bicoastal community of Black artists—sculptors, dancers, filmmakers, poets, musicians, and more—Nengudi has championed artistic innovation and freedom, locating the most profound meanings in the humblest of materials, digging deep into her most intimate, personal experience to find universal resonance.
During Nasher Prize Month, and for a month after, the Nasher’s Public Gallery at the entrance to our building will be filled with examples of Nengudi’s work. Visitors will gain some sense of her way with found objects, mastery of unconventional materials, and ability to generate complex associations and powerful emotions. And yet the story that gallery offers—limited in size and holding but a few works—is necessarily incomplete. To fill out the picture, to broaden and deepen our understanding and appreciation of Nengudi’s art and influence, we’ll host a range of lectures, conversations, and events over the course of Nasher Prize Month, including a conversation with the artist herself. In addition, this issue of The Nasher offers a range of features, essays, and conversations, some directly concerned with Nengudi and others that take up themes in her work as they are explored by younger artists today, artists inspired by her example.
I’ve no doubt you’ll enjoy encountering Senga Nengudi’s work when you next visit the Nasher. And in perusing this magazine, and perhaps attending some of our events this March, your sense of the dense artistic world her work inhabits will be expanded, and some of those things that our beautiful gallery display cannot so easily convey will become evident. As always, we are grateful for the Nasher Prize jury’s wisdom in selecting Senga Nengudi as our 2023 laureate.
With every best wish,
Jeremy Strick
Director