James T. Demetrion Distinguished Artist Series: Simone Leigh
Please note Simone Leigh will be closed to the public on Friday, Feb. 23. Advance registration for the artist’s James T. Demetrion Distinguished Artist Lecture is at capacity. A standby line will open in the lobby at 5 pm on Friday, Feb. 23 to redistribute seats in event of no-shows.
Questions? Email Hirshhornexperience@si.edu
Hirshhorn Insiders, email HMSGdevelopment@si.edu
Artist Simone Leigh is celebrated for a rigorous, multifaceted practice that centers the experiences, care, and labor of Black women. Leigh’s first full-scale survey exhibition is currently on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and is composed of more than twenty years of work in sculpture and video, including works from her seminal presentation as the first Black woman selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, in 2022. For a special one-night-only event, Leigh will sit in conversation with renowned scholar and longtime interlocutor Christina Sharpe. Sharpe is a prolific author, critic, and academic whose works include In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016) and Ordinary Notes (2023). Join us as Leigh and Sharpe discuss Leigh’s remarkable practice, its evolution of Black feminist thought, and how it seeks to acknowledge acts of labor and care, particularly among and for Black women.
This annual program is made possible by the Friends of Jim and Barbara Demetrion Endowment Fund, established in 2001 to celebrate Jim Demetrion’s seventeen-year tenure as the Hirshhorn’s second director.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Simone Leigh (b. Chicago, Illinois, 1967) is informed by a disciplined attention to a wide swath of historical periods, geographies, and artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora and often combines the female body with domestic vessels or architectural elements to point to unacknowledged acts of labor and care, particularly among and for Black women. Clay forms the basis of most of Leigh’s artworks, including her bronze sculptures, which are first modeled in clay. The artist pushes the medium’s possibilities through scale and method, challenging conventional, hierarchical fine-arts histories, which can still attach to ceramics associations around women’s labor, decoration, domestic crafts, and utility. This exhibition traces the artist’s unique visual language through signature motifs, including cowrie shells, braiding, rosettes, face vessels, and eyeless faces. Through Leigh’s re-performing of these forms in varying materials and scales, new structures of thought and meanings emerge, each consistently centering the experiences and intellectual labor of Black femmes.
Christina Sharpe is a writer, professor, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto. She is also a senior research associate at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class (RGC) at the University of Johannesburg. Sharpe is the author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (2010) and In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016). Her third book, Ordinary Notes (2023), won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Awards in Nonfiction. She is currently working on What Could a Vessel Be? (FSG/Knopf, Canada, 2025) and Black. Still. Life. (Duke University Press, 2025). Her writing has appeared in many artist catalogues and journals.
Gallery Experience: Angela Tate on Simone Leigh
FREE
Meet at the information desk in the lobby in advance of a noon start.
Angela Tate, curator of women’s history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), will lead a special tour exploring Simone Leigh and Black women’s artistic internationalism, meaning the connection between Black women artists and their international representations across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS GALLERY TALK WAS RESCHEDULED FROM JANUARY 19.
About the Speaker
Angela Tate is curator of women’s history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Prior to joining the Smithsonian, she worked as curator and public historian in a variety of archives and museums, focused on telling inclusive and expansive stories of the American past. She is a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern University and was educated at California State University, San Bernardino, and Sacramento City College. Her dissertation follows the history of Black women in radio and their involvement in global civil rights movements, with an emphasis on the intersections among celebrity, activism, and feminism. This work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the New York Public Library, and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. Her work has appeared in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture and several upcoming publications. Find more information at www.atpublichistory.com.
About the Exhibition
For over two decades, Simone Leigh has embraced a polyphonic artistic vocabulary that elaborates on Black feminist thought, an intellectual tradition that values and centers the experiences of Black women. Informed by a rigorous attention to a wide swath of historical periods, geographies, and artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora, Leigh often combines the female body with domestic vessels or architectural elements to point to unacknowledged acts of labor and care, particularly among and for Black women. For her presentation at the Hirshhorn, the artist has included three new bronze sculptures, Bisi, Herm, and Vessel (2023) in the galleries. Leigh’s monumental bronze Satellite (2022), which stood sentry outside the US Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, has been installed at the southern entrance to the Hirshhorn to signal the exhibition’s arrival.
If you have questions or a request for access services or accommodations that can make your experience more inclusive, please contact hirshhornexperience@si.edu. One to two weeks advance notice is recommended but not required.
Curator’s Tour: Simone Leigh
FREE
Meet at the Information Desk in the Lobby
Hirshhorn curator Anne Reeve will walk visitors through the exhibition Simone Leigh, which highlights work from the artist’s landmark presentation representing the United States at the 2022 Venice Biennale alongside key ceramic, bronze, and video works from throughout her career.
About the Exhibition
For over two decades, Leigh has embraced a polyphonic artistic vocabulary that elaborates on Black feminist thought, an intellectual tradition that values and centers the experiences of Black women. Informed by a rigorous attention to a wide swath of historical periods, geographies, and artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora, Leigh often combines the female body with domestic vessels or architectural elements to point to unacknowledged acts of labor and care, particularly among and for Black women. For her presentation at the Hirshhorn, the artist has included three new bronze sculptures, Bisi, Herm, and Vessel (2023) in the galleries. Leigh’s monumental bronze Satellite (2022), which stood sentry outside the US Pavilion in Venice, has been installed at the southern entrance to the Hirshhorn to signal the exhibition’s arrival.
If you have questions or a request for access services or accommodations that can make your experience more inclusive, please contact hirshhornexperience@si.edu. One to two weeks advance notice is recommended but not required.
Art Cart: Who? You? Express Yourself!
Dive into the world of Simone Leigh’s art! Explore her sculptures and make your own one-of-a-kind portraits and sculptures inspired by the things that make you special. Find the Art Cart in the Lerner Room on the Third Level.
Do this at home! Make your own abstract sculpture inspired by Barbara Hepworth. Instructions here.
ABOUT THE ART CART
Want to make art inspired by your favorite Hirshhorn works on view? The Art Cart offers young artists a hands-on maker experience during their visit to the Hirshhorn. Each week’s Art Cart offers a fresh and fun theme featuring an artwork on view, an art making activity to do at the Museum, and kids’ projects to extend the fun at home!
The Art Cart is free; no registration required. Drop in any Saturday between 10 am and 1 pm.
Nursing caregivers are welcome. Stroller parking is available in the Hirshhorn Lobby. If there are access services or accommodations that can make your experience more inclusive (e.g., ASL interpretation, live captioning, etc.), please contact hmsgeducation@si.edu. 1-2 week’s advance notice is recommended but not required.
Guided Tour: Simone Leigh
MEET IN THE LOBBY
30–60 Minutes
FREE
Registration is not required
Join us for a guided experience of the Hirshhorn’s unparalleled collections and groundbreaking exhibitions. Each tour offers an opportunity to engage with select works on view and the art and artists of our time through close looking, critical thinking, and conversation. Explore Hirshhorn exhibitions, encounter the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, make connections, and learn new ways to create through common threads, ideas, and practices in artmaking today.
Joining is easy! Meet your Gallery Guide in the Hirshhorn Lobby.
Tours of outdoor sculpture are subject to weather conditions and will be moved indoors in the event of inclement weather.
Group of 10 or more people? Request a guided experience for your community group using our online request form.
The Hirshhorn’s campus, exhibitions, and public programs are accessible. Please let us know how we can tailor your experience to best accommodate you and your party. An ASL interpreter can be requested for this program; two weeks’ advance notice is appreciated. Email us at HirshhornExperience@si.edu with requests and questions.
Simone Leigh Hirshhorn Insider Member Preview
7:00–9:00 pm Hirshhorn Insider Member Preview
RSVP is essential. This invitation is non-transferable.
Business casual attire.
Simone Leigh will survey approximately twenty years of highly disciplined production in ceramic, bronze, video, and installation. Accompanied by a major monograph, Simone Leigh offers visitors a timely opportunity to gain a holistic understanding of the complex and profoundly moving work of this groundbreaking artist.
Simone Leigh is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and Eva Respini, Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs, Vancouver Art Gallery (former Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the ICA/Boston), with Anni A. Pullagura, Assistant Curator, ICA/Boston. Its presentation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is coordinated by Curator Anne Reeve, with support from Curatorial Assistant CJ Greenhill Caldera. The exhibition will tour jointly to the California African American Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art from June 2024—January 2025.
With warmest thanks, the ICA/Boston gratefully acknowledges the following philanthropic partners for their magnificent support of Simone Leigh.
Major support is provided by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
Lead corporate support is provided by eu2be.
Generous support is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, Girlfriend Fund, and Wagner Foundation
Leadership gifts are provided by Amy and David Abrams, Stephanie Formica Connaughton and John Connaughton, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, James and Audrey Foster, Agnes Gund, Jodi and Hal Hess, Hostetler/Wrigley Foundation, Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Brigette Lau Collection, Henry Luce Foundation, Kristen and Kent Lucken, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, Gina and Stuart Peterson, Helen and Charles Schwab, and the Terra Foundation for American Art
Essential support is also provided by Suzanne Deal Booth, Kate and Chuck Brizius, Richard Chang, Karen and Brian Conway, Steven Corkin and Dan Maddalena, Federico Martin Castro Debernardi, Jennifer Epstein and Bill Keravuori, Esta Gordon Epstein and Robert Epstein, Negin and Oliver Ewald, Alison and John Ferring, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman, Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld and the Hassenfeld Family Foundation, Peggy J. Koenig and Family, The Holly Peterson Foundation, David and Leslie Puth, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Leslie Riedel and Scott Friend, Mark and Marie Schwartz, Kim Sinatra, Tobias and Kristin Welo, Lise and Jeffrey Wilks, Kelly Williams and Andrew Forsyth, Nicole Zatlyn and Jason Weiner, Jill and Nick Woodman, Marilyn Lyng and Dan O’Connell, Komal Shah and Gaurav Garg Foundation, Kate and Ajay Agarwal, Eunhak Bae and Robert Kwak, Jeremiah Schneider Joseph, Barbara H. Lloyd, Cynthia and John Reed, and anonymous donors.
Simone Leigh is presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden through the generous lead support of Sandra Masur and Scott Spector. Major support has been provided by Eric and Cheryl McKissack, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, and Kimberly and Rueben Charles. Additional funding was provided by the Hirshhorn International Council and Hirshhorn Collectors’ Council.
This project received Federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and the Smithsonian’s Women’s Committee.
Simone Leigh, Herm (Detail), (2023). Bronze, 98 x 30 x 28 inches (249 x 76 x 71 cm). ©Simone Leigh, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery. Photo by Timothy Schenck.
Storytime: Totally You!
Let’s dive into the world of Simone Leigh and celebrate all the things that make us who we are! We’ll explore Overburdened with Significance (2011) by Simone Leigh and listen to a read-aloud of The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson (illustrated by Rafael López). At the end, your little artists can create wearable art pieces inspired by the ceramic rosettes featured in Simone Leigh, and share the joy of expressing what makes them special!
Meet in the Museum Lobby.
Do this at home! Make your own abstract sculpture inspired by Barbara Hepworth. Instructions here.
ABOUT STORYTIME
Join Hirshhorn Kids on Wednesdays for a one-of-a-kind Storytime experience! Each week offers a fun and fresh theme for our youngest artists and their adults. Get a fun and hands-on introduction to a new artwork each week, and participate in a joyful read-aloud filled with music, stories, and movement. Then, stay and play while your little artist creates. No reservations or tickets required. Nursing caregivers are welcome. Stroller parking is available in the Hirshhorn Lobby. If there are access services or accommodations that can make your experience more inclusive (e.g., ASL interpretation, live captioning, etc.), please contact hmsgeducation@si.edu. 1-2 week’s advance notice is recommended but not required. For a group of ten or more, please contact mcgettigant@si.edu to reserve a program in advance.
Storytime: Moonbear’s Shadow
Join us and educators from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum to explore and play with light and shadow! We’ll tour the galleries and hunt for shadows in several artworks, read the story Moonbear’s Shadow by Frank Asch aloud, and explore making our own works using light and shadow.
Meet in the Museum Lobby.
Do this at home! Brighten up the darkness with this colorful and playful Mini Art Lesson exploring light. Instructions here.
ABOUT STORYTIME
Join Hirshhorn Kids on Wednesdays for a one-of-a-kind storytime experience! Each week offers a fun and fresh theme for our youngest artists and their adults. Get a fun and hands-on introduction to a new artwork each week, and participate in a joyful read-aloud filled with music, stories, and movement. Then, stay and play while your little artist creates. No reservations or tickets required. Nursing caregivers are welcome. Stroller parking is available in the Hirshhorn Lobby. If there are access services or accommodations that can make your experience more inclusive (e.g., ASL interpretation, live captioning, etc.), please contact hmsgeducation@si.edu; 1–2 week’s advance notice is recommended but not required. For a group of ten or more, please contact mcgettigant@si.edu to reserve a program in advance.
