ARTISTS
Joan Didion: What She Means
Joan Didion: What She Means is an exhibition as portrait, a narration of the life of one artist by another. Organized by critically acclaimed writer and New Yorker contributor Hilton Als, the exhibition features approximately 50 artists ranging from Betye Saar to Vija Celmins, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maren Hassinger, Silke Otto-Knapp, John Koch, Jorge Pardo, Ed Ruscha, Pat Steir, and many others. The more than 200 works include painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video, and footage from a number of the films for which Didion authored screenplays.
Opening less than a year after her death at age 87, and planned since 2019, Joan Didion: What She Means follows a meandering chronology that grapples with the simultaneously personal and distant evolution of Didion鈥檚 voice as a writer and pioneer of the 鈥淣ew Journalism.鈥� The exhibition closely follows her life according to the places she called home and is laid out in chronological chapters鈥擧oly Water: Sacramento, Berkeley (1934鈥�1956); Goodbye to All That: New York (1956鈥�1963); The White Album: California, Hawai鈥榠 (1964鈥�1988); and the final chapter, Sentimental Journeys: New York, Miami, San Salvador (1988鈥�2021).
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Joan Didion: What She Means is an exhibition as portrait, a narration of the life of one artist by another. Organized by critically acclaimed writer and New Yorker contributor Hilton Als, the exhibition features approximately 50 artists ranging from Betye Saar to Vija Celmins, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maren Hassinger, Silke Otto-Knapp, John Koch, Jorge Pardo, Ed Ruscha, Pat Steir, and many others. The more than 200 works include painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video, and footage from a number of the films for which Didion authored screenplays.
Opening less than a year after her death at age 87, and planned since 2019, Joan Didion: What She Means follows a meandering chronology that grapples with the simultaneously personal and distant evolution of Didion鈥檚 voice as a writer and pioneer of the 鈥淣ew Journalism.鈥� The exhibition closely follows her life according to the places she called home and is laid out in chronological chapters鈥擧oly Water: Sacramento, Berkeley (1934鈥�1956); Goodbye to All That: New York (1956鈥�1963); The White Album: California, Hawai鈥榠 (1964鈥�1988); and the final chapter, Sentimental Journeys: New York, Miami, San Salvador (1988鈥�2021).
Artists on show
- Alan Saret
- Alma Lavenson
- Amanda Williams
- Ana Mendieta
- Andy Warhol
- Anne Truitt
- Barbara Bloom
- Ben Sakoguchi
- Betye Saar
- Bill Owens
- Brigitte Lacombe
- Calvert Vaux
- Chiura Obata
- Christopher Williams
- Diane Arbus
- Dominique Nabokov
- Don Bachardy
- Ed Ruscha
- Edward Weston
- Elaine Reichek
- Elanor Colburn
- Elmer Wachtel
- Felix González-Torres
- Frederick Law Olmsted
- Frohawk Two Feathers
- Garry Winogrand
- Glenn Ligon
- Griffin Dunne
- Helen Lundeberg
- Henry Clarke
- Henry Wessel
- Hilton Als
- Irving Penn
- Jack Pierson
- Jeffrey Henson Scales
- John Koch
- Jorge Pardo
- Juergen Teller
- Kenneth Anger
- Kim Fisher
- Liz Larner
- Maren Hassinger
- Martin Puryear
- Michele Zalopany
- Noah Purifoy
- Pat Steir
- Penny Slinger
- Richard Avedon
- Richard Diebenkorn
- Robert Bechtle
- Roger Steffens
- Ronald Moran
- Silke Otto-Knapp
- Susan Meiselas
- Suzanne Jackson
- Todd Webb
- Vija Celmins
- Walterio Iraheta
- Wayne Thiebaud
- William Eggleston
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