The Brooklyn Museum is dedicating an inaugural museum survey exhibition to the late artist and designer Virgil Abloh, beginning July 1, 2022 and ending January 29, 2023. A mix of fashion, large-scale sculpture, immersive spaces, video and sketches, the exhibition, titled Figures of Speech, showcases nearly two decades of Abloh’s life’s work.
“This is the first museum survey exhibition dedicated to the late artist and designer Virgil Abloh, whose work reshaped ideas about contemporary fashion, art, commerce, design and youth culture,” said the Brooklyn Museum in its 2022 exhibition program announcement.
Virgil Abloh: ‘Figures of Speech’ is organized by Michael Darling, former James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The independent curator and author Antwaun Sargent is responsible for the presentation in the Brooklyn Museum. It is supported by Northern Trust.
Other exhibition highlights of the year include the museum’s artist presentations, including the solo show by Brooklyn-based Salvadoran artist Guadalupe Maravilla, exploring healing between generations through art and ritual; the first museum exhibition of the work of Jimmy DeSana, a pioneer of post-conceptual photography; transgressive art by Nellie Mae Rowe, an important but overlooked figure in 20th-century American folk art; and Brooklyn-based artist Duke Riley’s exploration of the environmental impact of the plastics industry on global and local ecosystems.
In this, Riley takes a critical look at the environmental impacts of two major industries that have significant impacts on global and local ecosystems: whaling and plastic. The exhibition, titled “Death to the Living, Long Live Trash,” opens on June 17, 2022 and ends on April 23, 2023.
“The exhibition features Riley’s recent works, which transform everyday plastic waste into ivory carvings, fishing lures and ‘Sailor’s Valentines’ (a kind of souvenir made from shells) to comment on the role that large corporations and individuals played in destroying the Earth’s waterways in the past and present,” explains the museum.