Martin Puryear: Nexus
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
September 27, 2025 – February 8, 2026
Cleveland Museum of Art
April 12 – August 9, 2026
High Museum of Art
September 25, 2026 – January 17, 2027
For more than half a century, the preeminent sculptor Martin Puryear (born 1941) has captivated the public with works of astonishing beauty and elaborate craftsmanship, whose sources of inspiration range from global cultures and social history to the natural world. Co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), Martin Puryear: Nexus is the first substantial survey of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. Assembling some 50 works from across Puryear’s career, the exhibition focuses on his use of a rich variety of materials and media—from sculptures in wood, leather, glass, marble, and metal to rarely shown drawings and prints.
After debuting at the MFA, where it is on view in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, the exhibition travels to the Cleveland Museum of Art from April 12 through August 9, 2026, followed by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from September 25, 2026 through January 17, 2027. Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by a catalogue produced by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Martin Puryear: Nexus reflects the artist’s singular practice, one that combines the distinctive techniques of production with the formal histories he has encountered through a lifetime of movement, research, and study. The exhibition begins with works on paper from the early 1960s and follows Puryear’s subsequent innovations in form, material, and process. Rooted in new scholarship, Martin Puryear: Nexus illuminates the ways in which the artist’s unique vocabulary has been shaped by his enduring interests in global traditions of material culture, African American history, and the natural world.
“With this exhibition we are pleased to feature an exceptional artist of our time and powerful works that speak to Martin Puryear's creativity and exceptional craftsmanship, and the lifelong learning that has fueled his practice,” said Pierre Terjanian, the MFA’s Ann and Graham Gund Director. “The sculptures included in this survey extend a compelling invitation to engage with themes of culture, identity, and history. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Cleveland Museum of Art for their partnership in making this project possible.”
“Martin Puryear’s art is staggeringly beautiful and also moving in the way that it invites us to see with fresh eyes the world we inhabit,” said William M. Griswold, Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director, the Cleveland Museum of Art. “Given the remarkable range of aesthetic traditions, cultural histories, and techniques of making that Puryear integrates in his work, we are especially pleased to present his career retrospective at museums with comprehensive collections from around the world, and spanning thousands of years of history.”
Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Highlights
Martin Puryear, Self (1978, The Joslyn Art Museum)
One of Puryear’s most iconic sculptures, Self shows the importance of dynamic formal oppositions in the artist’s work. At once a dark monolithic mass, Self is light and hollow, enclosing a hidden interior volume. It was assembled piece by piece through cold molding, a technique that Puryear learned through boat-building and which he has integrated into some of his most celebrated sculptures.
Martin Puryear, Night and Day (1984, Nasher Sculpture Center)
A rarely exhibited work, Night and Day reflects Puryear’s enduring interest in natural manifestations of black and white, which divide the two halves of the work’s semicircular arch. One end of the arch sits on the floor, while the other hovers just above it.
Martin Puryear, On the Tundra (1986, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Puryear’s interest in the natural world and ornithology are reflected in his creation of this cast iron sculpture, an abstracted form suggesting a falcon perched on a rock. It was partially inspired by a work from the MFA’s collection: a 1619 portrait of a gyrfalcon by the Mughal court painter Mansur (active around 1590–1630). Mansur’s painting—a reproduction of which hangs in Puryear’s studio—was immediately compelling for him not only within the history of ornithological portraiture but also as a representation of geopolitical trade routes, as the gyrfalcon is not native to India and likely arrived via diplomatic trade channels from Europe. The exhibition also includes On the Tundra (Winter) (2022, collection of the artist), a recent iteration of the original sculpture in white marble.
Martin Puryear, Confessional (1996–2000, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Composed partly of wire mesh covered with tar, this work evokes a hollow inner space that is visible and obscured at the same time. Its title suggests one possible reading, delineating the wooden platform as a place upon which a confessor—implicitly, the viewer—may kneel and “confess.” Confessional is included only in Boston’s presentation.
Martin Puryear, Big Phrygian (2010–14, Glenstone Museum)
This colossal sculpture is the most dramatic representation of Puryear’s sustained engagement with the lineage of the Phrygian cap. This headdress signified formerly enslaved people in ancient Rome and later became a symbol of resistance to persecution during the French and American Revolutions. In the exhibition it is shown alongside the etching Phrygian (Cap in the Air) (2012, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
Martin Puryear, Hibernian Testosterone (2018, courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery)
This large, wall-mounted sculpture reproduces in full scale the 12-foot antlers of the Irish elk, an extinct species of deer common during the Ice Age. Scientists of the 1700s had a theory that its antlers—which likely evolved to help the species survive combat and demonstrate sexual prowess and whose growth was propelled by testosterone—contributed to its extinction as they eventually became too heavy for the animal to hold up. Martin Puryear distills this parable-like history from the animal kingdom into a straightforward visual statement, suspending the antlers from an inverted cross.
Martin Puryear, Aso Oke (2019, Jack Shear Collection)
Encountered by visitors before they enter the exhibition, this monumental sculpture, cast in bronze, borrows its form from the fila gobi, a ceremonial cap worn by the Yoruba people of Nigeria. The intricate open latticework is a recurring technique used by Martin Puryear throughout his career.
Martin Puryear, A Column for Sally Hemings (2021, collection of the artist)
One of Puryear’s few indoor site-specific sculptures, this was created for the US Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Responding to the pavilion’s architecture, which was modeled on Monticello—the primary residence and plantation of Thomas Jefferson—the work’s fluted base echoes the Doric columns between which visitors passed to enter the exhibition space in Venice. The sculpture’s title refers to Sally Hemings (1773–1835), the enslaved Black woman, with whom Jefferson had at least six children.
Martin Puryear: Nexus also features a film that documents Puryear’s most recent outdoor work Lookout (2023), a permanent site-specific commission for the Storm King Art Center. In Cleveland and Atlanta, additional film footage as well as prints, drawings, and documentation of other public commissions will also be on view, demonstrating how Puryear extends his studio practice into the public realm and maintains his commitment to craft and concept on a monumental scale.
Artist Martin Puryear
Over the past five decades, Martin Puryear has created a body of work based on abstract organic forms rich with psychological, cultural, and historical references. His labor-intensive sculptures are made by hand at his studio in upstate New York. They combine practices adapted from many different traditions, including wood carving, joinery, and boat building, as well as more recent technology. As a student, Puryear studied ornithology, falconry, and archery, and in the 1960s he volunteered with the Peace Corps in west Africa, where he was exposed to the region’s Indigenous crafts. Since then he has continued to travel extensively, observing a range of cultures and their unique approaches to object making. “I think there are a number of levels at which my work can be dealt with and appreciated,” he has said. “It gives me pleasure to feel there’s a level that doesn’t require knowledge of or immersion in the aesthetic of a given time or place.”
Martin Puryear was born in Washington, D.C., in 1941. His first one-person exhibition took place in 1968, and since then he has exhibited throughout the world, including public commissions in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. His work was featured in Documenta 9, and in 1989 he represented the U.S. at the Bienal de São Paulo, where he was awarded the festival’s Grand Prize. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a survey of his work, which traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. In 2015, the Art Institute of Chicago organized an exhibition of 50 years of his works on paper, which traveled to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Martin Puryear received a MacArthur Foundation award in 1989 and a National Medal of Arts from President Obama in 2011. In 2019 he represented the U.S. at the 58th Venice Biennale. His recent commissions include outdoor works at Madison Square Park, the Storm King Art Center, and the Deichman Library in Oslo.
Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Catalogue
Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by an expansive and richly illustrated catalogue. Designed and published by the Cleveland Museum of Art, with distribution by Yale University Press, the publication is anchored by five essays authored by a new generation of scholars: Rizvana Bradley, Joan Kee, Emily Liebert, Michelle Millar Fisher, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi.
Exhibition Catalogue Cover
Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art
Image courtesy Yale University Press
Artwork © Martin Puryear
240 Pages, 10.50 × 13.00 in, 212 color + b-w illus.
Published October 2025
Additional perspectives enter the book through series of responses to individual works, contributed by thinkers and makers from a range of disciplines, many of whom are long-time interlocutors of the artist. They include Nairy Baghramian, Alex Da Corte, Thelma Golden, Maya Lin, Kerry James Marshall, Julia Phillips, Charles Ray, and Billie Tsien. Alongside these contemporary perspectives, the catalogue features archival materials that have never before been published.
Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Curators
The exhibition is co-curated by Emily Liebert, Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art, Chair of Art of the Americas, Modern and Contemporary Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Reto Thüring, Head of Culture at the Foundation for Art, Culture, and History in Winterthur, Switzerland and former Beal Family Chair, Department of Contemporary LArt at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with Gabriella Shypula, Leigh and Mary Carter Director’s Research Fellow, The Cleveland Museum of Art. The MFA’s presentation is organized by Ian Alteveer, Beal Family Chair, Department of Contemporary Art with Daisy Alejandre, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art. The High’s presentation is organized by Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art.
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