overview
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art has organized Joel Shapiro: The Bronzes, an ambitious exhibition that seeks to connect broad audiences with one of the most influential sculptors working today. This major project will survey 15 of Shapiro’s bronze sculptures from 1983 to 2015. The exhibition will occupy more than 8,000 square feet in MMoCA’s main galleries—the only venue where this exhibition can be seen.
teaching pages
Introduce your students to key works of art on view at MMoCA. Teaching pages may be used to prepare for a museum visit or as an ongoing classroom resource.
Joel Shapiro
Bring your students to MMoCA to experience contemporary art first-hand. Learn more about MMoCA’s guided exhibition tours here.
about the exhibition
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art has organized Joel Shapiro: The Bronzes, an ambitious exhibition that seeks to connect broad audiences with one of the most influential sculptors working today. This major project will survey 15 of Shapiro’s bronze sculptures from 1983 to 2015. The exhibition will occupy more than 8,000 square feet in MMoCA’s main galleries—the only venue where this exhibition can be seen.
Joel Shapiro has enjoyed a long and distinguished career. Shapiro’s work can be found in numerous public collections in the United States and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Tate Gallery, London; IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
This exhibition provides an opportunity to introduce Shapiro’s work to a new generation of artists, students, and museumgoers. Joel Shapiro: The Bronzes will be on view at MMoCA from September 23, 2018-January 13, 2019 (date tentative). The exhibition features bronze sculptures that vary in size, including several large-scale works that are rarely seen indoors. Through bold geometric form, Shapiro’s works explore the permeable boundary between abstraction and figuration. Shapiro’s gravity-defying geometric constructions are suggestive of bodies in motion or holding dynamic poses.
To fully document Joel Shapiro: The Bronzes, MMoCA will publish a substantial and richly illustrated hardbound catalogue of the same title. It will contain a foreword by the exhibition’s curator and MMoCA director, Stephen Fleischman. The publication will also contain a major essay by the art historian and scholar, Peter Boswell.
Support for “Joel Shapiro: The Bronzes” has been provided by the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation; and Ellen Rosner and Paul J. Reckwerdt.
The lead corporate sponsor of the exhibition is BMO Wealth Management.
Generous support has also been provided by
Travel Wisconsin; The DeAtley Family Foundation; the David and Paula Kraemer Fund; JH Findorff & Son Inc.; Hooper Corporation and General Heating and Air Conditioning; Marv Conney; Sara Guyer and Scott Straus; Dynee and Barney Sheafor; Nancy Doll and Michael Bernhard; Sylvia Vaccaro; Dane Arts; Katie Howarth Ryan; the Irwin A. and Robert D. Goodman Foundation, Inc.; Lynda and Charles Clark; a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts; and MMoCA Volunteers.