This painting shows a canyon landscape viewed from a high vantage point, with ridges and formations extending into the distance. The horizon is positioned high in the painting, with the light-blue sky featuring soft white clouds. The canyon displays vibrant shades of red, pink, and green, contrasting with shadowed areas in darker shades of blue and gray. In the bottom right corner of the painting, there are some geometric white and blue patterns overlayed on top of the canyon.
Kay WalkingStick, North Rim Temple, 2023, oil on panel, Gift of the Collectors Committee and Gift of Funds from Reid Walker, © Kay WalkingStick, Courtesy the artist and Hales, London and New York, Photo by JSP Art Photography, 2024.17.1
Current Exhibition

Homelands

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    East Building
    East Building, Mezzanine, Gallery E214

  • Ticketing Information

    Admission is always free and passes are not required

What does it mean to have a “homeland” when it’s shaped by movement, memory, and change?

This exhibition brings together 20 works by modern and contemporary artists who use their own experiences and United States history to explore how people relate to place. Some artists consider the local or global pressures that caused them to leave one place for another. Others examine ancestral or familial links with distant homelands. Through individual and communal stories, the works reflect larger histories and events in the US and beyond. Together, they invite us to consider the multilayered ways each of us connects to place.

Please note that the exhibition will be closed on January 11, 2027, for the rotation of light-sensitive works on paper.

Selected works

This painting shows a canyon landscape viewed from a high vantage point, with ridges and formations extending into the distance. The horizon is positioned high in the painting, with the light-blue sky featuring soft white clouds. The canyon displays vibrant shades of red, pink, and green, contrasting with shadowed areas in darker shades of blue and gray. In the bottom right corner of the painting, there are some geometric white and blue patterns overlayed on top of the canyon.
Kay WalkingStick, North Rim Temple, 2023, oil on panel, Gift of the Collectors Committee and Gift of Funds from Reid Walker, © Kay WalkingStick, Courtesy the artist and Hales, London and New York, Photo by JSP Art Photography, 2024.17.1
This piece shows a colorful house resembling a three-dimensional architectural sketch that has been created with intricate, thin, multicolored lines against white paper. The roof of the house is pointed and covered in curved shingles, while the walls of the house appear to be brick. The thin lines creating the image are an array of bright colors including neon green, vivid blue, bright yellow, magenta, and purple. In some areas, the lines overlap, creating darker shades. Beyond the edges of this house, the thin lines continue outward in curves and loops.
Do Ho Suh, Seoul Home – Inverted, 2023, thread drawing embedded in handmade wove STPI paper, Gift of the Collectors Committee, © Do Ho Suh, Photo courtesy of the Artist and STPI, 2024.50.1
The artwork features an abstract composition with a large, intricately detailed statue occupying the central space. The statue is adorned with ornate patterns and is in a pose. To the left, a smaller figure is riding a bull. On the right, another figure is seated. The background includes soft, mountainous shapes and abstract forms, enhanced by drips and washes of paint that add texture and depth. In the upper right corner, a circle contains an intricate design.
Hung Liu, Post-Age, 2000, oil on canvas, Gift of Marsha Garces Williams, 2023.78.1
This painting displays a composition of curved and linear shapes, forming an intricate abstract pattern of golden-yellow lines. The abstract forms suggest a landscape with undulating lines reminiscent of topographical maps. Standing among the yellow lines are three tall brown sunflowers with their flowers facing the ground. There is another small figure at the bottom of the image that is hard to identify but appears to be made of crossed sticks. All of these figures cast dark blue shadows behind them. At the top of the painting there is a row of trees, some green and healthy while others are thin, brown, and leafless. Around the trees are mountains capped with snow. Above them is a sliver of light blue sky.
G. Peter Jemison, Sentinels (Large Yellow), 2006, acrylic, oil and collage on canvas, Gift of Funds from Sharon Percy Rockefeller and Senator John Davison Rockefeller IV, 2022.22.1

Stories

The image consists of multiple rectangular panels with wavy lines and blocky shapes, creating a fragmented landscape. The colors used are rich earth tones such as reds, blacks, blues, greens, and beige, resembling rock formations and valleys.

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The top three-quarters of this horizontal landscape painting is filled with roiling, deeply shadowed clouds that tower over a line of buffalo crossing a grassy meadow below. Small in scale, the buffalo form a line that extends away from us at a diagonal into the distance to our right. Sunlight creates a bright reflection on the stream where the frontmost buffalo crosses, but the other animals are nearly backlit in the raking light. Trees, with branches whipping in the wind, rise along the left side of the painting, and the mountainous landscape to our right is lost in darkness under heavy clouds. The clouds above lighten from navy blue in the lower right corner of the sky to slate blue and white at the center of the painting. Small patches of blue sky are visible between a few breaks in the clouds, and sunlight falls on a cliff-like mountain face in the distance beyond the trees to our left. Another bank of parchment-colored clouds in the upper left corner, closer to us, contrasts with the glimmering light highlighting some of the clouds nearby.

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Organization  

Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Curated by E. Carmen Ramos, chief curatorial and conservation officer, and Natalia Ángeles Vieyra, associate curator of Latinx art, both of the National Gallery of Art 

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