News / Ed Ruscha / Museum Exhibitions

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Ed Ruscha
Drum Skins

January 11–October 4, 2020
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin
blantonmuseum.org

This show features more than a dozen new works by Ed Ruscha painted on found drum heads. Ruscha sourced the paintings’ visual iconography and language from the American vernacular.

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Edward Hopper and the American Hotel

October 26, 2019–February 23, 2020
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
www.vmfa.museum

Edward Hopper and the American Hotel explores the artist’s images of hospitality settings showcasing more than sixty of the artist’s paintings, drawings, watercolors, and illustrations. Also included are thirty-five works by American artists that similarly explore the visual culture of hotels, travel, and mobility from the early twentieth century to the present, including work by Gregory Crewdson, Ed Ruscha, and Cindy Sherman.

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The Foundation of the Museum
MOCA’s Collection

May 19, 2019–January 20, 2020
Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles
www.moca.org

To mark the museum’s fortieth anniversary, this exhibition presents a selected topography of artworks that speak to the diversity of MOCA’s collecting over the past four decades. With special emphasis on works associated with the museum’s remarkable history of exhibitions, The Foundation of the Museum: MOCA’s Collection shows the institution’s holdings as shaped by a changing landscape of developments in contemporary art and curatorial focus, as well by as the social and cultural backdrops that inform them. Work by Chris Burden, Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman, Albert Oehlen, Nancy Rubins, and Ed Ruscha is included.

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Ed Ruscha in
Life Is a Highway: Art and American Car Culture

June 15–September 15, 2019
Toledo Museum, Ohio
www.toledomuseum.org

Life Is a Highway brings together a diverse selection of artists to showcase how the automobile reshaped the twentieth-century American landscape and cultural attitudes of self-expression. Work by Ed Ruscha is included.

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Unsettled

October 27, 2018–April 30, 2019
Palm Springs Art Museum, California
www.psmuseum.org

Unsettled, cocurated by JoAnne Northrup and Ed Ruscha, amasses two hundred artworks by eighty artists spanning two thousand years to explore the geography of frontiers characterized by vast expanses of open land, rich natural resources, diverse indigenous peoples, colonialism, and the ongoing conflicts that inevitably arise when these factors coexist. This exhibition originated at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno. Work by Chris Burden and Ed Ruscha is included.

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Peindre la nuit

October 13, 2018–April 15, 2019
Centre Pompidou-Metz, France
www.centrepompidou-metz.fr

This exhibition explores the night in modern and contemporary painting, music, literature, photography, and video. With a focus on the perception of night rather than its iconography, the exhibition intends to be a nocturnal experience. Work by Harold Ancart, Francis Bacon, Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, and Ed Ruscha is included. 

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A Journey That Wasn’t

June 30, 2018–February 10, 2019
The Broad, Los Angeles
www.thebroad.org

This exhibition explores complex representations of time and its passage. The show includes more than fifty works drawn from the museum’s collection of postwar and contemporary art and features more than twenty artists, including Richard Artschwager, Gregory Crewdson, Andreas Gursky, Anselm Kiefer, and Ed Ruscha.

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West by Midwest

November 17, 2018–January 27, 2019
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
mcachicago.org

West by Midwest tells a story that illuminates the ways that contemporary art practices spread and develop by tracing the intersecting lives of artists who have migrated from the American Midwest to the West Coast since the mid-twentieth century. Lured by career opportunities, warmer weather, and the prospect of a better life promised by the postwar boom, those artists who were able to migrate attended art schools together, shared studios, exhibited work in the same galleries, collaborated on projects, engaged in activism, and dated one another. Work by Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman, Sterling Ruby, and Ed Ruscha is included.

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Ed Ruscha
Double Americanisms

November 16, 2018–January 20, 2019
Secession, Vienna
www.secession.at

An installation of works by Ed Ruscha that source visual iconography and language from the American vernacular is on view at the Secession in Vienna.

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Ed Ruscha
Archaeology and Romance

August 11, 2018–January 6, 2019
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
www.hrc.utexas.edu

This exhibition features more than 150 objects and presents Ed Ruscha’s celebrated books, photographs, drawings, and prints alongside unpublished archival production materials, layout sketches, and studio notebooks. The exhibition also examines the stages of conception, design, and production leading to the publication of his groundbreaking artist’s books, and provides audiences with an unprecedented look into Ruscha’s creative process.

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Ed Ruscha
Very

September 14, 2018–January 6, 2019
KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen, Norway
kodebergen.no

With works from the UBS Art Collection as a basis, this exhibition covers the artist’s production from the 1960s onward, focusing on the technically and graphically innovative approaches that Ed Ruscha has made use of over the years. Studies from his most iconic paintings and artist’s books are also on display. This show has traveled from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark.

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Picture Fiction
Kenneth Josephson and Contemporary Photography

April 28–December 30, 2018
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
mcachicago.org

Picture Fiction considered the conceptual photography of Kenneth Josephson. In addition to presenting four major series made by the Chicago-based artist roughly between 1960 and 1980, the exhibition highlighted links between Josephson and other contemporary artists working in photography, film, and sculpture, including Roe Ethridge, Ed Ruscha, and Jeff Wall.

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Sea of Desire

June 2–November 4, 2018
Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, France
www.fondationcarmignac.com

The phrase “Sea of Desire” on a large-scale painting by Ed Ruscha welcomes visitors to this exhibition, which channels a spirit of rebellion and change. Sea of Desire confronts the viewer with compelling artworks that imply revolution, freedom, and a quest for beauty. Work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol is included.

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Ed Ruscha
Course of Empire

June 11–October 7, 2018
National Gallery, London
www.nationalgallery.org.uk

In Course of Empire, the audience will encounter Ed Ruscha’s modern take on the cyclical nature of civilization, evocative of Thomas Cole’s series of the same name concurrently on display. In contrast to Cole’s work, which evokes that artist’s grandiose vision of the rise and fall of a classical civilization, Ruscha’s Course of Empire focuses on the industrial buildings of Los Angeles—simple, utilitarian, boxlike structures with no pretension to beauty, but redolent of economic might and global reach.

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Unsettled

April 20–September 9, 2018
Anchorage Museum, Alaska
www.anchoragemuseum.org

Unsettled, co-curated by JoAnne Northrup and Ed Ruscha, amasses two hundred artworks by eighty artists spanning two thousand years to explore the geography of frontiers characterized by vast expanses of open land, rich natural resources, diverse indigenous peoples, colonialism, and the ongoing conflicts that inevitably arise when these factors coexist. This exhibition traveled from the Nevada Museum of Art. Work by Chris Burden and Ed Ruscha is included.

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Ed Ruscha
Very

May 17–August 19, 2018
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
en.louisiana.dk

With works from the UBS Art Collection as a basis, the exhibition covers the artist’s production from the 1960s onward, focusing on the technically and graphically innovative approaches that Ed Ruscha has made use of over the years. Studies from his most iconic paintings and artist’s books are also on display.

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Word/Play
Prints, Photographs, and Paintings by Ed Ruscha

February 3–May 6, 2018
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
www.joslyn.org

Word/Play is Ruscha’s first major exhibition in the state of Nebraska, where he was born, and brings together prints, photographs, and artist’s books dating from the 1960s through 2014, all of which accompanies a selection of major paintings.

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Unsettled

August 26, 2017–January 21, 2018
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno
www.nevadaart.org

Unsettled, co-curated by JoAnne Northrup and Ed Ruscha, amasses two hundred artworks by eighty artists spanning two thousand years to explore the geography of frontiers characterized by vast expanses of open land, rich natural resources, diverse indigenous peoples, colonialism, and the ongoing conflicts that inevitably arise when these factors coexist. Work by Chris Burden and Ed Ruscha is included.

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California Dreaming
Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston & Ed Ruscha

June 23–October 15, 2017
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut
www.nbmaa.org

California Dreaming will present more than one hundred important works from 1952 to the present by these three artists. From the gestural abstraction and relentless experimentation of Ed Moses to the smooth, process-cool, pop objectification of Billy Al Bengston, to the precise wordplay and craftsmanship of Ed Ruscha, these works define an epoch in American painting.

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Ed Ruscha in
Urban Planning: Art and the City 1967–2017

May 5–August 13, 2017
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
camstl.org

This exhibition explores how contemporary artists consider the changing postwar urban landscape, beginning with the rapid development of the highway system in the mid-twentieth century and moving through industrialization’s continuing decline. Featured is work in a range of media by more than twenty international artists, including Ed Ruscha.

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Los Angeles
A Fiction

March 8–July 9, 2017
Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France
www.mac-lyon.com

This exhibition presents works that have become synonymous with the image of Los Angeles. Pioneers like Ed Ruscha are included alongside younger artists such as Alex Israel and Jonas Wood.

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The American Dream
Pop to the Present

March 9–June 18, 2017
British Museum, London
americandreamexhibition.org

This exhibition traces the past six decades of American history through prints of unprecedented scale and ambition. Starting with the explosion of Pop art in the 1960s, the show includes works by many of America’s most celebrated artists. Works by Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselmann are on view.

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The Great Graphic Boom

March 3–May 28, 2017
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo
www.nasjonalmuseet.no

This exhibition explores the intense interest in graphic art among many leading artists of the postwar art period. With works from twenty-five artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol, the show highlights the use of graphic media both as a refined form of expression and as an important phase in the artistic process. The exhibition has been organized with support from Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany.

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Human Interest
Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection

April 2, 2016–April 2, 2017
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org

Human Interest offers new perspectives on one of art’s oldest genres. Drawn entirely from the museum’s holdings, the more than two hundred works in the exhibition show changing approaches to portraiture from the early 1900s until today. Bringing iconic works together with lesser-known examples and recent acquisitions in a range of mediums, the exhibition unfolds in eleven thematic sections. Work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willem de Kooning, Roe Ethridge, Duane Hanson, Mike Kelley, Sally Mann, Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Rudolf Stingel, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Wood is included.