Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence
February 8, 2025 – June 8, 2025
Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence is the first retrospective devoted to the Latina artist’s work. The exhibition traced Jaramillo’s (b. 1939) practice from the mid-1960s to the present, featuring examples of her early work, paintings from her breakthrough Curvilinear series, her handmade paper works, and a selection of recent paintings, which together reveal her enduring engagement with and significant contributions to abstraction. Drawing on her ongoing study of subjects as wide-ranging as physics, the cosmos, archaeology, mythology, and modernist design philosophies, Jaramillo’s work examines the relationship between the earthly and the metaphysical and explores the potential for abstraction to offer alternate ways of understanding our world.
Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence was organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, and curated by Erin Dziedzic, former Director of Curatorial Affairs. The Bechtler’s presentation was organized by Bechtler Curator Katia Zavistovski.
Clare Rojas: Past the Present
September 21, 2024 – January 20,2025
Over the past twenty years, Clare Rojas (b. 1976) has developed a multifaceted art practice that draws on a wide range of inspirations, from ecofeminism to diverse literary and musical sources, the folklore of her Peruvian ancestry, the crisp formalism of 20th-century abstraction, and the fantastical spirit of Surrealism, which she has shaped into her own unique visual vocabulary. Clare Rojas: Past the Present featured nearly 100 examples of the artist’s work from the past five years, including large-scale and intimate paintings, bronze sculptures, works on paper, and an installation of wallpaper designed in collaboration with Schumacher x Peg Norriss. While Rojas has veered between abstraction and magical realist figuration throughout her career, the compelling recent work included in this exhibition deftly conjoins these modes of artmaking in compositions that center female empowerment and that marry an exploration of the legacies—and lacunae—of modernism with contemporary experience, confronting issues surrounding representation, the fragile state of the environment, and the patterns of everyday life. Interweaving biography, history, and metaphor, Rojas creates links between the past and present, the mystical and mundane.
Clare Rojas: Past the Present was accompanied by a richly-illustrated catalogue with essays by Dr. Katia Zavistovski, curator of the exhibition, and Dr. Jenni Sorkin, a leading scholar of feminist art and material culture.
Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now
August 31, 2024 – March 30, 2025
Surrealism was a revolutionary artistic and literary movement that was founded in Paris in 1924 but soon spread across the globe. Emphasizing the fantastical, dream imagery, and subconscious thought, Surrealism privileged experimentation and uninhibited modes of expression, producing radical new techniques and visual forms that continue to inspire artists today. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the movement, Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now pairs examples of historical Surrealism from the museum’s collection with works by contemporary artists whose practices extend the legacies of Surrealist exploration. Paying tribute to the inclusive and international scope of the movement, the exhibition includes works by Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, Germaine Richier, and Rufino Tamayo alongside that of Julie Curtiss, Marcel Dzama, Heri Dono, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Thomas Lerooy, Wangechi Mutu, Naudline Pierre, and Shoshanna Weinberger.
Their Friendship and Their Art”: Bechtler Family Favorites
June 22, 2024 – August 18, 2024
“Their Friendship and Their Art”: Bechtler Family Favorites, showcased works from the museum’s permanent collection selected by museum founder Andreas Bechtler and his daughters Fiona Bechtler-Levin, Tanja Bechtler, and Viviane Bechtler-Smith, in consultation with the museum’s curator Katia Zavistovski.
Based in Zurich, Switzerland, Bessie and Hans Bechtler began their journey as art collectors in the 1950s. Over the following decades, they developed deep friendships with many of the most influential artists of the day, and passed their love of modern art and collecting on to their son, Andreas Bechtler. “What an incredible journey this has been,” Andreas recalled when the Bechtler Museum opened to the public in 2010. “When my parents left me part of their collection, I knew I needed to do something special and worthy of the artists who had given so much to my family—their friendship and their art. Charlotte is my home, so I decided to give back to the city in a small way.”
Taking its title from Andreas Bechtler’s sentiment, this exhibition highlights works by a wide range of artists, among them Edgar Degas, Sam Francis, Jasper Johns, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, and Gregorio Vardanega. Featuring iconic works from the collection and those with personal significance to the Bechtler family, this exhibition was a testament to the shared passion for art across generations.
Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson: Infinite Space, Sublime Horizons
February 17, 2024 – June 2, 2024
Born and raised in Iceland, Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson (b. 1963) has spent the last 30 years developing a unique practice that melds the disciplines of painting, weaving, and drawing, creating an innovative and labor-intensive body of work that blurs the boundaries between abstraction and representation, and between fine art and craft. Based on the captivating landscape and skies of Iceland, her work is deeply rooted in environmental subjects and concerns while also contributing to art historical discourses on landscape painting and postwar abstraction. Now based in Cleveland, Ohio, Jónsson returns to Iceland annually to immerse herself in the landscape, allowing it to reveal images, forms, colors, and compositions that she later transforms into tightly woven textiles that she calls paintings. This exhibition, Jónsson’s first in the Southeast, brings together more than a dozen of her paintings, including three of her most monumental works to date, and pairs them with her more intimate watercolors and drawings.
This exhibition was organized by Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art director Andrea Gyorody, in close collaboration with the artist, and with assistance from Carson Vandermade and Lisette Isiordia.
Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Flora
September 23, 2023 – January 21, 2024
Artists Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler have been working collaboratively since 1990, employing video, sound, photography, and other mediums to explore connections between history, memory, social relationships, and narratives both factual and imagined. This exhibition features Hubbard / Birchler’s multimedia project Flora, which is based on their discoveries about the previously unknown American artist Flora Mayo. In the early 1920s Mayo traveled to Paris to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. There she met fellow student Alberto Giacometti, with whom she had a romantic relationship. While Giacometti is among the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, the majority of Mayo’s oeuvre has been lost or destroyed, and her biography has been relegated to a footnote in Giacometti scholarship. Hubbard / Birchler reframe this history from a feminist perspective, bringing Mayo’s compelling biography to life through a hybrid form of storytelling that deftly weaves together narration, reenactment, and documentary. Asking critical and timely questions about systems of marginalization and the construct of art history, their work prompts viewers to consider how art history is scripted and whose stories get told.
This exhibition was organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The Bechtler’s presentation was organized by Bechtler Curator Katia Zavistovski.
Giacometti and the Artists of the Grande Chaumière
September 23, 2023 – January 21, 2024
Giacometti and the Artists of the Grande Chaumière was conceived as a pendant to the exhibition Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Flora, which spotlights the untold story of aspiring artist Flora Mayo and her relationship with Alberto Giacometti, who studied together at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in the 1920s.
In the early 1900s, the Montparnasse district of Paris was a vibrant center of artistic activity where artists and intellectuals from around the globe converged to exchange ideas and develop avant-garde modes of artmaking. The Académie de la Grande Chaumière was a gathering place for such creative expression. Established in 1904, the art school was founded as an alternative to the restrictive academic conventions of the École des Beaux-Arts, and encouraged innovation and cross-cultural dialogue. Drawn from the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition features work by an international array of artists who studied or taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. The myriad styles represented in the works on view are a testament to the many ways in which these artists expanded aesthetic possibilities, and offer a window into the rich artistic landscape of the time.
Europe in the Age of Picasso, 1900–1973
March 18, 2023 – September 4, 2023
Europe in the Age of Picasso, 1900–1973 commemorated the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death. Picasso (1881–1973) is widely celebrated for his remarkably multifaceted art practice, which kept pace with the rapid technological and cultural developments of the 20th century and often influenced or anticipated attendant shifts in artmaking. Throughout his nearly eight-decade-long career, Picasso witnessed transformative artistic innovations and expanding aesthetic possibilities. Reflecting on the radical art historical developments that took place in Europe during Picasso’s 75 years of creative production, this exhibition brings together works from the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection by pioneering artists including Le Corbusier, Edgar Degas, Max Ernst, Barbara Hepworth, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, and Victor Vasarely, among others. Featuring approximately 125 works by over 50 artists, this exhibition is organized in sections that explore individual topics, with galleries devoted to shared artistic interests, modes of artmaking, the Bechtler family’s personal engagement with artists and their work, and particular art movements—together demonstrating the sweeping ways that Picasso and his peers redefined the forms and meanings of art.
Yasumasa Morimura (born 1951, Japan), Egó Sympósion,2016, Digital video, 74 minutes. Installation view at Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 2023.
Yasumasa Morimura: Egó Sympósion
March 18, 2023 – September 4, 2023
Over the past forty years, Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura has explored constructions of identity and representation in his photography, film, and performance work. Through skilled use of makeup, costumes, props, and digital manipulation, Morimura transforms himself into renowned artists, iconic works of art, and influential historical figures, primarily from the Western canon. These elaborately restaged pictures are at once an homage and a critique, and wryly confront complex issues concerning self and nationhood, cultural appropriation, celebrity, gender, and authorship.
In Egó Sympósion, Morimura’s first feature-length film, he stars as eleven artists celebrated for their self-portraits—in order of appearance: Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Diego Velåzquez, Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, and, finally, himself. In a series of vignettes with Morimura reciting the voice-over narration, the artist protagonists contemplate aspects of their lives and their impulses for artmaking. Both playful and poignant, Egó Sympósion more broadly questions how art history is scripted and rehearsed.
Andy Warhol Artworks © 2025 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Installation view at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 2023.
Pop to Now: Warhol and His Legacy
September 10, 2022 – February 26, 2023
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was an American artist, film director, producer, and the leading figure of Pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture of the 1960s and 1970s and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreen, photography, film, and sculpture. Warhol inspired a host of contemporaries; among the most famous of them were Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) and Keith Haring (1958-1990). Featuring art and memorabilia by Warhol, Basquiat, and Haring, this exhibition also highlights their continued influence through the cutting-edge work of contemporary artists ThankYouX, Kristin McIver, and HEES, which includes NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and digital and data-driven art.
This exhibition was developed in partnership with Aktion Art.
Installation view of Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Departure Without Destination, 2022.
Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Departure Without Destination
April 2, 2022 – July 31, 2022
Writer, journalist, photographer, traveler, cosmopolitan, and cultural icon Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) was one of the most dazzling and contradictory figures in modern Swiss cultural history. Annemarie Schwarzenbach: Departure Without Destination, was presented in collaboration with Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, and was the first major retrospective dedicated to the photography and writing of this progressive pioneer.
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Isaac Julien, Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, 2021. Nine-screen installation, super-high definition, colour, 9.1 surround sound. 39 min 08 sec. © Isaac Julien, courtesy the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery. Installation view Bechtler Museum of Modern Art.
Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi - A Marvellous Entanglement
October 30, 2021 – February 27, 2022
The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art presented Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, the exhibition’s institutional debut in the United States. In this installation, Julien examined the legendary Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, telling the story of the architect’s life and work through dramatic enactments of her words and ideas performed amid her most prized modernist buildings. Julien’s video installation—the centerpiece of the exhibition—enveloped the viewer and crossed boundaries between artforms, time, and continents. Conceived as a multilayered film, the work was projected simultaneously on nine screens, resulting in time losing its chronological feeling.