Events
Public Installation
c.20:21
Patti Smith
January 1–31, 2021, 8:21pm daily
Piccadilly Lights, London
circa.art
Patti Smith will take over the Piccadilly Lights advertising screen in London’s Piccadilly Circus for two and half minutes every day at 20:21 gmt (8:21pm), transforming the 4k screen into a digital canvas. Her monthlong presentation A New Year will combine musical performance and poetry, and feature two live prerecorded events at midnight on New Year’s Eve and January 20, the date of the US presidential inauguration. The project is presented by Circa, a new platform presenting digital art in the public space established in 2020. Circa commissions a different artist each month to present new ideas that consider our present-day world. To watch the events online, visit circa.art.
Patti Smith, A New Year, 2021, Piccadilly Lights, London
In Conversation
Patti Smith
David Remnick
Friday, October 11, 2019, 7pm
New York Society for Ethical Culture
festival.newyorker.com
Patti Smith will speak with New Yorker editor David Remnick as part of the New Yorker Festival. The annual event brings together key figures in politics, books, film, music, art, and popular culture for three days of programming, including panel discussions, live performances, intimate conversations, and exclusive screenings. A copy of Smith’s new memoir, Year of the Monkey, is included with each ticket. The event has reached capacity.
Patti Smith: Year of the Monkey (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019)
Announcements
Award
CIRCA Prize 2023
The Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA), a platform established in 2020 to present digital art in the public space, has launched the third edition of the CIRCA Prize, which calls for artists of all ages to respond to the CIRCA 20:23 manifesto on hope. Throughout September, thirty international artists will see their work appear at 20:23 (8:23pm) local time on London’s iconic Piccadilly Lights and across a global network of digital screens, following in the footsteps of CIRCA-commissioned artists such as Douglas Gordon and Patti Smith. A jury of artists and collaborators, including Gordon, will select the winner, who will receive £30,000 to support their future practice as well as a new trophy designed by Ai Weiwei.
CIRCA Prize 2023 call for submissions on Piccadilly Lights, London
Honor
Patti Smith
Légion d’honneur
Patti Smith was named Officier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur by the French ambassador to the United States, Philippe Étienne, on May 21, 2022. Reflecting the multifaceted contours of French society, the Légion d’honneur is the country’s highest order of merit. For two centuries, it has been presented on behalf of the Head of State to reward the most deserving citizens in all fields of activity.
Patti Smith receiving the Officier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, New York, May 21, 2022. Photo: Lynn Goldsmith
Award
Patti Smith
2020 WSJ Magazine Innovator Award
Patti Smith was named the Literature Innovator at the 2020 WSJ Magazine Innovator Awards on November 11, 2020. This year marked the tenth anniversary of the awards, which recognize inspiring talents from a variety of cultural pursuits. The poet, artist, and award-winning memoirist and musician was honored for the indelible mark she has made on American letters and for her decades of revelatory work. Actor Ethan Hawke presented the award during the ceremony, which was filmed this year due to covid-19 restrictions. To watch the ceremony, visit the WSJ Magazine’s YouTube channel.
Patti Smith. Photo: Steven Sebring for WSJ Magazine
Support
Plan Your Vote
Created in 2020, Plan Your Vote is an initiative of Vote.org that harnesses the power of the visual arts to promote and empower citizens to exercise their right to vote. The organization has collaborated with artists, including Davide Balula, Sally Mann, and Patti Smith, to create a public library of voting advocacy images, available for anyone to download and share, in order to help ensure everyone has a voting strategy and is vote ready. To check if you are registered to vote, or learn more about your voting rights, visit vote.org.
Artwork © Sally Mann
Museum Exhibitions
Closed
Patti Smith in
Module of Temporality
February 17–May 14, 2023
Module of Temporality, Kyiv
moduleoftemporality.com
Highlighting artistic perseverance in times of uncertainty, Module of Temporality includes paintings, sculptures, installations, and audiovisual works by twenty-eight artists from ten countries. Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith present a film installation titled Chornobyl, which was recorded in Chernobyl’s Red Forest—a ten-square-kilometer area surrounding the nuclear power plant—and in the abandoned urban environment left after the 1986 disaster. The project, which incorporates recordings of voices of Ukrainian children from Chernobyl, is a warning about the dangers of nuclear power.
Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, Chornobyl, 2022 (still) © Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith
Closed
Evidence
Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith
October 20, 2022–March 6, 2023
Centre Pompidou, Paris
www.centrepompidou.fr
Evidence is a poetic, immersive journey through the physical, sound, and visual voyages of Soundwalk Collective as it enters into dialogue with the poetic trajectories of Patti Smith. Between audio, films, abstract images, objects, and creations collected throughout the collective’s travels, this exhibition guides the public through a vast exploratory installation that juxtaposes photos, texts, and original works by Smith.
Installation view, Evidence: Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith, Centre Pompidou, Paris, October 20, 2022–March 6, 2023. Artwork © Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith. Photo: Bertrand Prevost
Closed
Mondo Reale
23a Esposizione Internazionale
July 15, 2022–January 8, 2023
Triennale di Milano, Milan
triennale.org
Mondo Reale—organized by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, as part of the 23rd International Exhibition at the Triennale di Milano—includes films, paintings, photography, installations, and sculptures by seventeen international artists. The exhibition aims to explore reality as a reverie, proposing an aesthetic experience around knowledge and its erasure, and a direct, emotional encounter with multiple visions of the unknown through the lenses of art and science. Work by Patti Smith and Sarah Sze is included.
Sarah Sze, Tracing Fallen Sky, 2020 (detail) © Sarah Sze. Photo: Thibaul Voisin
Closed
Patti Smith in
Souvenirs de voyage: La collection d’Antoine de Galbert
April 27–July 28, 2019
Musée de Grenoble, France
www.museedegrenoble.fr
Souvenirs de voyage explores Antoine de Galbert’s passion for contemporary art. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings, photographs, installations, primitive art, and religious and popular objects from the unique collection. Work by Patti Smith is included.
Patti Smith, Susan Sontag’s Grave, Paris, Montparnasse Cemetery, 2005 © Patti Smith
Closed
Patti Smith in
The Big Picture: A Transformative Gift from the Hall Family Foundation
April 28–October 7, 2018
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
nelson-atkins.org
The Big Picture will feature a selection of more than 800 photographs recently donated by the Hall Family Foundation. These new pieces span the entire history of the medium from a 1826 print by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, the inventor of photography, to a 2016 work by Patti Smith.
Patti Smith, Tolstoy’s Bear, Moscow, 2016 © Patti Smith. Photo: courtesy Nelson-Atkins Media Services/Tiffany Matson