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Carol Bove
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC
March 5, 2026 – August 2, 2026
Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling rotunda at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a notorious diva, a space that routinely swallows the contemporary art it is meant to display. But in “Carol Bove,” the artist’s first formal museum survey, Wright’s demanding architecture has met a formidable match. Bove, long known for her rigorous attention to the spaces between things, does not merely occupy the ramps; she wrestles with them, dances with them, and ultimately transforms them into an extension of her own sprawling, 25-year practice.
Tracing a quarter-century of work, the exhibition offers a masterclass in the evolution of scale and material. We are guided from Bove’s early, intimately scaled assemblages of paperback books—quiet, precise arrangements that feel like physical manifestations of cultural memory—to the delicate paper collages and, ultimately, the towering, crumpled-steel sculptures that have defined her recent, highly visible output. What unites these disparate objects is an unyielding investigation into surface, color, and the very mechanics of perception.
Ascending the first section of the rotunda, stepping into the space housing Carol Bove’s monumental steel configurations feels akin to entering a heavy-metal forest where industrial brawn meets candy-colored pliability. Towering, rusted I-beams stand like weathered sentinels alongside brightly painted steel tubes—in shades of neon green, safety yellow, and matte coral—that have been crushed and folded as if they were no more resistant than hollow strands of licorice. This dramatic juxtaposition of raw, oxidized weight against the deceptively soft, crumpled forms of the painted metal brilliantly underscores the artist’s overarching project; as noted in the exhibition’s press materials, Bove “explores the workings of perception through ongoing experiments with surface, color, scale, and space.” The muscularity of the rusted steel anchors the room, while the contorted, vividly hued pipes and pristine geometric discs seem to dance around them, creating a dynamic, almost choreographic tension that rewards the viewer as they navigate the physical heft of these commanding works.
The open sightlines of the atrium are utilized to brilliant effect, allowing a brightly painted knot of steel on a lower ramp to converse directly with works suspended two tiers above. But Bove is not solely concerned with visual geometry; she is equally invested in the viewer’s physical endurance and attention span. Dispersed along the winding ascent are deliberate interventions meant to pause the relentless march of the museumgoer. There are comfortable, architecturally integrated seating areas, a tactile library where studio materials invite direct, physical handling, and even artist-made chess tables. These are not mere interactive gimmicks, but vital resting pulses that force us to slow down, play, and recalibrate.
Perhaps the most thrilling gesture in the show, however, is a curatorial act of excavation. In a nod to how artistic languages mutate and converse across generations, Bove has partially liberated a long-hidden mural by Joan Miró and Josep Llorens Artigas, built into the museum’s ramps in the 1960s but long obscured. Framed through a precise, diamond-shaped cutout, the midcentury mosaic is pulled from the institution’s architectural unconscious and drafted into Bove’s immersive reimagining of the space.
It is a daring move that encapsulates the ethos of the entire survey. Bove is an artist who understands that history—whether it takes the form of a vintage paperback, a piece of industrial scrap, or a forgotten modernist masterpiece—is raw material waiting to be reanimated. In her hands, Wright’s luminous temple of spirit is not just a container for art, but a living, breathing collaborator.