Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, Truth Social, X, Youtube, Instagram

The High Museum of Art is hosting Martin Puryear: Nexus, a major retrospective of the American sculptor's work. Puryear, now 85, started making art in the 1960s, and the show surveys his career. Visitors can see it at The High from September 25 until January 17, 2027.

The Nexus retrospective has visited two other cities before arriving in Atlanta. First it was in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts where it opened in late September 2025 and ran into February. Following that it traveled to Cleveland where it opened in April and closed in early August.

The exhibition at The High Museum of Art is not a reproduction of the exhibition at Boston or Cleveland. According to Atlanta News First, The High has added some works of art to the exhibition, including an installation that has only been exhibited three times prior to this. According to curator Michael Rooks, the works of art by Martin Puryear provide a new entrance point for younger audiences to experience his work, and explore the relationship of old fashioned hand work to the past and to the present.

The sculptures of Martin Puryear are constructed from a variety of mediums such as wood, marble, and metal. More than fifty sculptures, as well as prints and drawings, were included in the Boston retrospective as well as a short film that documents his first brick sculpture, Lookout, located at the Storm King Art Center in New York. His sources are also numerous including West African Yoruba headdresses, Jean Toomer’s 1923 book Cane, and the story of Sally Hemings at Jefferson’s Monticello.

Over the decades, this sculptor has received many honors, among them the National Medal of Arts from President Obama. He was also chosen as the artist for the U.S. presentation at the 2019 Venice Biennale.

Reviewers who saw the Boston show were enthusiastic. Jason Rosenfeld called it a perfect show and a good first look at Puryear for newcomers in The Brooklyn Rail, focusing in on an early work of Puryear’s, Bask from 1976. The sculpture is a dark stained pine form over twelve feet long. He likened it to an overturned canoe.

The High in Midtown Atlanta is the retrospective's sole Southern venue, and the show stays up there until January 17, 2027. That gives Georgians ample time to plan a visit.

'NO AD' subscription for CDM! Sign up here and support real investigative journalism and help save the republic!