SLAM’s 2024 exhibition season opens with Matisse

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 1, 2023—Highlights of the Saint Louis Art Museum’s 2024 exhibition program include an exploration of the significance of the sea in the work of Henri Matisse; a presentation of technical discoveries made in a three-year study of SLAM’s world-class holdings of German Expressionist paintings; and an examination of the role of narrative in historical and contemporary African art.

These presentations are among the 11 exhibitions coming to the museum next year, 10 of which were organized locally by members of SLAM’s curatorial department.

Ticketed exhibitions

The museum will open three ticketed exhibitions next year in SLAM’s East Building exhibition galleries.

Opening Feb. 17, “Matisse and the Sea” is the first exhibition to examine the significance of the sea across modernist artist Henri Matisse’s career, which included artwork in coastal locations on the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Pacific. Marine imagery was an important catalyst for Matisse’s artistic experimentation—most notably in the Saint Louis Art Museum’s own iconic painting, “Bathers with a Turtle.”

The exhibition includes imagery ranging from Matisse’s early panoramic marine views in the South of France to his late paper cut-outs, representing life beneath the waves, which were inspired by his visit to Tahiti in 1930. It offers an opportunity to explore the artist’s travel across his career as well as the global influences that informed his art, particularly African sculptures and masks.

Curated by Simon Kelly, SLAM’s curator of modern and contemporary art, “Matisse and the Sea” will include approximately 65 works in many media including paintings, sculptures, paper cut-outs, drawings, prints, ceramics and textiles.

In June, SLAM will open “Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800: Highlights from LACMA’s Collection,” an exhibition of works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s notable collection of Spanish colonial art, underscoring the generative power of Spanish America and its central position as a global crossroads. After the Spaniards began colonizing the Americas in the late 15th century, artists working there drew from a range of traditions—Indigenous, European, Asian and African, reflecting the interconnectedness of the world.

The final ticketed exhibition of 2024, “Narrative Wisdom and African Arts,” puts historical works made by artists across sub-Saharan Africa during the 13th to 20th centuries in dialogue with contemporary works by African artists working around the world. Drawing upon public and private collections in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom, the exhibition is the first to offer a comparative examination of intersections between African arts and narratives across expansive genres, cultures, periods and contexts of patronage.

“Narrative Wisdom” opens in October and is curated by Nichole Bridges, the Morton D. May Curator of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, with curatorial assistant Amy Clark and research assistant Elyse D. Mack.

Non-ticketed exhibitions

In 2024, the museum will also present a diverse range of non-ticketed exhibitions.

“Native American Art of the 20th Century: The William P. Healey Collection” celebrates the promised gift of 100 works from Arizona-based collector William P. Healey. Featuring around 75 works from the gift, the exhibition shares the intergenerational story of modern Indigenous painters and sculptors who first developed then revolutionized the movement for Native American fine art. The free exhibition opens Feb. 23. It is curated by Alexander Brier Marr, the museum’s associate curator of Native American art.

“Concealed Layers: Uncovering Expressionist Paintings” will present new discoveries made during a three-year study of the museum’s world-class collection of German Expressionist paintings. Complete underpaintings, a lost title and studio graffiti are just some of the findings that will receive their public debut. The exhibition opens March 15 and is co-curated by associate paintings conservator Courtney Books and Melissa Venator, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Modern Art. It will coincide with the publication the new collection catalogue, written by Venator, titled “German Expressionism: Paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum.”

“The Work of Art: The Federal Art Project, 1935-1943” draws on SLAM’s holdings of works on paper created during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiative that put more than 10,000 artists to work during the Great Depression. In 1943, the federal government gave the museum more than 250 prints, drawings, watercolors and paintings—a group that included the first works by African American artists to enter SLAM’s collection. The free exhibition opens in July and is co-curated by Clare Kobasa, assistant curator of prints, drawings and photographs, and Amy Torbert, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of American Art.

The museum will also host two “Currents” exhibitions in 2024. “Currents 123” will introduce visitors to the work of Dallas-based Tamara Johnson who is known for hyper-realistic sculptures depicting ubiquitous household objects. “Currents 123,” which opens in April, will present the artist’s new sculptural works along with a video essay that explores the spaces in which familiar objects meet, permeate and merge with the unseen systems in the body. Johnson was the recipient of the 2022 to 2023 Freund Fellowship, which promotes the exhibition and acquisition of contemporary art at SLAM as well as the teaching of contemporary art principles at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University. In the fall, the 2023 to 2024 Freund Fellow, Crystal Z. Campbell, will showcase works in “Currents 124.” Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist who is currently developing new works for the exhibition.

Other non-ticketed, SLAM-organized exhibitions in 2024 include new media works, starting with “Wangechi Mutu: My Cave Call,” a video work by Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu that functions as a wisdom seeking parable. This installation opens Jan. 12 and is co-curated by Simon Kelly and Charlie Farrell, who is in the second year of her Romare Bearden Graduate Museum Fellowship at SLAM.

Finally, two textile exhibitions in 2024 will showcase collection items: “Shimmering Silks: Traditional Japanese Textiles” opens in March, and “Bolts of Color: Printed Textiles after WWII” is on view starting in November.

CONTACT: Molly Morris, 314.655.5250, molly.morris@slam.org