About
David R. Harper: Good Morning Sweetheart brings together sculpture, textiles, ceramics, stained glass, and found imagery to explore how memory takes shape in objects. Couches, perfume bottles, motel soaps, detergents, birds, flowers, fragments of figurative sculpture, and everyday household items appear throughout the exhibition. Familiar at first glance, these things are carefully handmade, altered, and recombined—becoming intimate, uncanny, and quietly charged.
The exhibition unfolds across two connected spaces. In the MMoCA Icon, Harper creates a suspended environment centered on a lightweight mid-century couch upholstered in handwoven tones of pink, sherbet, melon, and honey. Embedded with domestic cleaning products, the couch becomes a floating “memory bank”—a meditation on home, care, and repose—surrounded by a mobile featuring a summer patio umbrella and garlands of cast-ceramic Froot Loops.
In the State Street Gallery, the exhibition pivots around She Drank the Water That Was Meant for the Orchids (2019), a recent addition to MMoCA’s collection. New large-scale embroideries, stuffed horses with embedded objects, shelves of ceramic vases covered in cast cicadas, and ceramic flower bouquets extend the exhibition’s domestic and emotional terrain.
Across both spaces, memory functions as a material. Objects act as containers of experience—holding care, pleasure, grief, desire, and loss. Rather than telling a single story, Harper creates environments where meaning emerges through movement and attention. Looking becomes an active process, shaped by proximity, perspective, and the viewer’s own lived experience.
2026 Stephen Fleischman Lecture
Thursday, April 23 • 6 PM • Lecture Hall • Free Admission
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to host Milwaukee-based artist David R. Harper as the speaker of the 2026 Stephen Fleischman Lecture.
6 PM • Public Lecture • Lecture Hall • Free Admission
Listen as David R. Harper shares insight and inspiration into his artistic practice.
7 PM • Reception • Rooftop Lounge • Free Admission
Following the lecture, you’re invited to the Rooftop Lounge for a public reception. Mingle with friends old and new and enjoy a beverage from the cash bar.
Space is limited for this free lecture and advance registration is strongly encouraged.
About the Artist
David R. Harper (b. Toronto, Canada / Lives and Works in the American Midwest), received his BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Fiber and Material Studies. He currently teaches in the Painting and Drawing department at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New Studio Practice department at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
Harper has been included in group shows at museums in the US and Canada, including MASS MoCA, National Gallery of Canada and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including My Own Personal Ghost (The John Michael Kohler Art Center), Plateau (South Bend Museum of Art) Skin and Bone (Textile Museum of Canada), A solo touring exhibition of Harper’s work titled Entre Le Chien et Le Loup was organized by the University of Toronto in 2013
He has participated in several residencies, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2016), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (2014), and the Kohler Arts Industry (2012/2014)
His work can be found in a number of notable collections, including The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), The John Michael Kohler Art Center, The Museum of Wisconsin Art, The National Gallery of Canada, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (Los Angeles), and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
Support
Support for David R. Harper: Good Morning Sweetheart is generously provided by Paula and David Kraemer, and Gina and Michael Carter.