Barbara Chase-Riboud: Monumentale

On view from September 16, 2022, to February 5, 2023, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation presents Barbara Chase-Riboud Monumentale: The Bronzes, a major monographic retrospective which examines the artistic vision of the Paris-based artist, novelist, and poet, Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. Philadelphia, 1939).

Monumentale brings together 25 major sculptures from the 1950s to the present day, accompanied by 20 drawings. The exhibition illustrates how the artist has developed a highly original visual language that is also fundamentally global and transhistorical, with influences ranging from Italian Baroque architecture to West African bronze-making. Throughout her career, Chase-Riboud has deftly wielded the centuries-old tradition of bronze monument-making. Monumentale has been organized by Pulitzer Arts Foundation Curator Stephanie Weissberg.

Pulitzer Executive Director Cara Starke states, “The Pulitzer is delighted to present the work of Barbara Chase-Riboud. She is one of the first female artists to produce work in bronze at the scale and complexity for which she is known, pushing the material to its very limits. This exhibition illuminates the many ways in which she has advanced her singular formal and conceptual vision.”

Weissberg adds, “From her most recent sculptures to her earliest experiments in bronze, Chase-Riboud’s work has significantly broadened the definition of sculpture and asked important questions about who and what deserves to be remembered and monumentalized. She has put forth a remarkable body of sculpture, drawings, fictional writing, and poetry that together redefine the very meaning of monumentality.”

For more about the exhibition and programming, visit pulitzerarts.org. 

About the artist
(b. 1939, Philadelphia) is a renowned artist, an award-winning poet and a bestselling novelist. After receiving a BFA from Tyler in Philadelphia in 1957 (formerly Tyler School of Art), her career can be said to have begun when she crossed the Atlantic to spend a year as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She later graduated from Yale’s School of Architecture (1960) and moved to Europe. There she pursued an independent track, gaining training in a variety of sculpture-making skills and showing in museums and galleries. Her remarkable life has included decades of travel and life at the center of artistic, literary, and political circles that also included luminaries ranging from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Salvador Dalí, Alexander Calder, James Baldwin, and Mao Zedong to Toni Morrison, Pierre Cardin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Josephine Baker.

Chase-Riboud is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Knighthood of the French Légion d’Honneur, the Grand Prix Artistique from the Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation, the AWARE Prix d’Honneur, the Tannie Award in the Visual Arts in Paris, and the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award from the College Art Association. She is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, among other museums.

From October 11, 2022 to January 23, 2023, Serpentine Galleries in London is presenting Infinite Folds, an exhibition featuring over 30 works by Barbara Chase-Riboud in the artist’s first institutional solo presentation in the U.K., on view at Serpentine North.

Publications
The exhibition is accompanied by two publications, both co-published by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Princeton University Press. “Barbara Chase-Riboud Monumentale: The Bronzes” is a fully illustrated catalog, offering further exploration of the artist’s oeuvre, with essays by Courtney J. Martin, Director of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT; Christophe Cherix, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Akili Tommasino, Associate Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Erin Gilbert, New York-based curator and art advisor specializing in Modern and Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora; and Stephanie Weissberg. I Always Knew: A Memoir is a collection of letters written by Chase-Riboud to her mother, Vivian Mae Chase, sharing narratives of lives entwined over nearly four decades.

About the Pulitzer Arts Foundation
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is an art museum dedicated to fostering meaningful experiences with art and architecture. Since its founding in 2001, the museum has presented art from around the world in its celebrated building by Tadao Ando and its surrounding neighborhood. Offering personal encounters with art, the Pulitzer brings art and people together to explore ideas and inspire new perspectives.

The Pulitzer campus is located in the Grand Center Arts District of St. Louis, Missouri, and includes the museum, the Park-Like garden, a tree grove, and the Spring Church.

The museum is open Thursday through Sunday, 10am–5pm, with evening hours until 8pm on Friday. Admission is free. For more information, visit pulitzerarts.org.