Guggenheim to Hold Mid-Career Survey for Former Trustee Rashid Johnson

The Guggenheim Museum in New York will hold a mid-career survey next year for Rashid Johnson, an artist who sat on the institution’s board for seven years. He stepped down from the position last year to avoid a conflict of interest, according to the New York Times.

The exhibition, titled “Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers,” will run from April 18, 2025, to January 18, 2026, and will feature nearly 90 works. Among those slated to be shown are pieces from his 2008 photo series “New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club” and ones from his black soap painting series “Cosmic Slop.” There will also be works from his “Anxious Men” and “Broken Men” series on view.

Johnson’s first gained praise more than 20 years ago, when his work was featured in Thelma Golden’s 2001 “Freestyle” exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The show focused on a then-rising group of Black artists.

In an interview with the New York Times Naomi Beckwith, the Guggenheim’s deputy director and the exhibition’s co-organizer, lauded Johnson’s ability to connect his personal history with broader social issues. The show takes its title from a poem by Amiri Baraka, a major figure in the Black Arts movement between the 1960s and ’70s.

The show will travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas after the Guggenheim at a date that hasn’t yet been disclosed.

Sanguine (2024), a film exploring intergenerational dynamics in his own family, will premiere in Paris at Hauser & Wirth in October before being screened at the Guggenheim. In an image circulated of the film ahead of the Paris show, three figures pose for a portrait in a living room, each holding tribal masks to conceal their faces.

Beckwith said she had been in talks with Johnson about doing a project since organizing his first traveling museum show in 2012 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where she served as a curator.