MoMA Opens the First U.S. Retrospective of Isa Genzken Today

The Museum of Modern Art presents Isa Genzken: Retrospective, from today, November 23, 2013, to March 10, 2014. This is the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist's diverse body of work in an American museum, and the largest to date, encompassing Genzken's work in all mediums created over the past 40 years. Although Isa Genzken (German, b. 1948) might be best known in America for her more recent outrageous and humorous sculptural assemblages made of materials like plastic beach umbrellas, baby dolls, and wheelchairs, the breadth of her achievement-which includes not only sculptures, but paintings, photographs, collages, drawings, artist's books, films, monumental public sculptures, and large-scale installations-is still largely unknown in the United States.

Many of the 150 objects in the exhibition are on view in the U.S. for the first time. Isa Genzken is organized by Sabine Breitwieser, former Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, and Laura Hoptman, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art; Michael Darling, the James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Jeffrey Grove, the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art; with Stephanie Weber, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition will travel to Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois (April 12-August 3, 2014) and Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas (September 14-January 4, 2015).

Genzken's work has been part of the artistic discourse since she began exhibiting in the mid-1970s, but over the last decade a new generation has been inspired by the artist's radical inventiveness. The past 10 years have been particularly productive for Genzken, who, with a new language incorporating found objects and photographs, has created several bodies of work that have redefined assemblage for a new era.

Exhibition Opens in New York on November 23, Before Traveling to Chicago and Dallas in 2014.