David Smith: The Nature of Sculpture

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI

September 23, 2024 - March 2, 2025

David Smith: The Nature of Sculpture will be the first exhibition to focus on Smith's deep engagement with the natural world as source, subject, and site for his art. Celebrated for his pioneering incorporation of industrial techniques into his practice, Smith's enlistment of nature as a material and prime setting for sculpture was equally innovative. Spanning Smith's full career, the exhibition will feature some 40 sculptures, along with related paintings, reliefs, and works on paper to reclaim the primacy of nature within the artist's richly inventive oeuvre. This exploration of sculpture and nature will have particularly strong resonance at Meijer Gardens, where Smith's work will be in direct dialogue with the natural environs, including larger pieces situated outdoors to commune with the elements as the artist intended. Curated by Suzanne Ramljak, the Meijer's Vice President of Collections & Curatorial Affairs.

No One Thing. David Smith: Late Sculptures

Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY

February 1 - April 13, 2024

No One Thing. David Smith: Late Sculptures, features large painted sculptures made within the last five years of Smith's life. During this period, Smith radically enlarged the scale of sculpture, deploying his welding skills to fuse large steel plates and other industrial elements while allowing for improvisation. His innovations would forever change the art-historical paradigm of sculpture-making. The title of the exhibition, curated by Alexis Lowry and composed of seven sculptures, pays homage to Smith's versatility, stylistic ingenuity, and relentless experimentalism. As Smith said in 1951, "My reality...is not one thing; it is a chain of interlocking visions."

Songs of the Horizon: David Smith, Music, and Dance

The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY

June 24 - September 17, 2023

Songs of the Horizon: David Smith, Music, and Dance is the first museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the influence of music and dance in David Smith's work. It features rarely seen sculptures, paintings, and drawings on loan from major private and public collections, as well as art and archival materials from the Estate of David Smith in addition to works from the Hyde's permanent collection. Music and dance played significant roles in David Smith's life. Through his first wife, artist Dorothy Dehner, modern dance became one of his first introductions to avant-garde expression. He enjoyed jazz clubs and classical concerts in New York City and among a vibrant artistic community in the southern Adirondack region. Musicians and dancers absorbed in their practice provided a frontier of formal and psychological exploration for Smith, which he registered in painting, drawing, and sculpture.

David Smith: Billiard Players

Neuberger Museum of Art

November 17, 2021 - February 20, 2022

David Smith: Billiard Players focuses on a group of works Smith made from 1935 to 1945 that depict a billiards player as he takes aim at the ball. The implied potential kineticism of the subject underscores Smith's sculptures, drawings, and paintings on the theme, while he worked through the aesthetic styles of Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism during this early and fertile period of his career. Seen together, the Billiards Players provoke questions involving motion, time, masculinity, personal iconography and the space between representation and abstraction. 

The Sculptor’s Drawings

Museo Novecento, Florence, Italy

April 20 – July 12, 2018