The Time. The Place. Contemporary Art from the Collection

On November 4, the Henry opens The Time. The Place. Contemporary Art from the Collection, a museum-wide exhibition presenting a selection of artworks that have entered the Henry’s contemporary collection in the last two decades. More than half of the works are being exhibited at the Henry for the first time.

Ranging in media from video installation to photography and from sculpture to drawing, the approximately 50 works represent a multi-national roster of artists including Miguel Calderón, Raymond Boisjoly, David Hartt, Richard Long, Tracey Moffat, An-My Lê, Shirin Neshat, Kori Newkirk, Lorna Simpson, Allan Sekula, Buster Simpson, and Eve Sussman.

Across diverse, yet intersecting threads, these works explore and challenge conditions and events of contemporary life. They take viewers from domestic interiors to the streets of protest, from the site of a failed modernist housing project to the galleries of an anthropological museum, and from a Vietnam War reenactment to the rooms of a gay bathhouse rendered from memory.

The Time. The Place. probes the cultural, economic, political, historical, and personal dynamics that give meaning to place. Throughout the exhibition, the past lives in the present as an active agent to confront and contest. 

“In addition to engaging place as a site that can be located in time and space, works in the exhibition also address place as a condition of being,” says Nina Bozicnik, associate curator at the Henry. “Works in the exhibition  pose existential questions that evoke feelings of belonging and displacement.”

This exhibition is organized on the occasion of the Henry’s ninetieth anniversary, and in celebration of a twenty-year period in the museum’s history marked by a reaffirmed commitment to holding space for contemporary art and ideas.

The Time. The Place. Contemporary Art from the Collection opens on November 4. The lower level galleries close on March 25 and the upper level galleries will remain open until April 22.

The Time. The Place. Contemporary Art from the Collection is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Associate Curator, with assistance from Judy Sourakli, Curator of Collections, and Krista Schoening, Graduate Curatorial Assistant. Project management is provided by Susan Lewandowski, Manager of Exhibitions and Registration. Exhibition framework developed in collaboration with Luis Croquer, former Deputy Director of Exhibitions, Collections, and Programs.

Lead support for The Time. The Place. is provided by the T. William and Beatrice Booth Exhibition Fund and Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture.  Additional generous support for the exhibition and its related programs is provided by 4Culture, ArtsFund, ArtsWA, and the National Endowment for the Arts.