american minimal
The San Diego Museum of Art presents american minimal, a landmark exhibition celebrating the Minimalist art movement in the United States, curated by SDMA Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs Anita Feldman with curatorial collaboration from Jennifer Findley (JFiN Collective) and John Digesare.
Anchored by SDMA’s major Frank Stella work, Flin Flon VIII (1970), american minimal pays tribute to a passing generation of Minimalist artists, most notably Stella himself (1936–2024), while also shining a long overdue spotlight on the women who helped define the movement. The exhibition features the Abstract Classicists who pioneered a uniquely Californian vision of radical reductive form, alongside the ethereal, light-bending explorations of the Light and Space movement. american minimal highlights a range of works across diverse media, many on view for the first time.
James Hyde and Louise Nevelson experiment with resin and Perspex, while John Cage, Nancy Haynes, and Jay Kelly employ simple repetitive markings evocative of mathematics, music, and early computer-generated art. Artists working in Southern California as part of the related Light and Space movement, including John McCracken and DeWain Valentine, focused on perceptual phenomena and incorporated the latest technologies of local engineering and aerospace industries to develop light-filled objects. Photographs by Arnold Newman vividly document the broader Minimalist culture concurrent in the visual arts, music, and dance. Works in american minimal are drawn from collections across San Diego, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs, underscoring California’s deep ties to the movement.
In a critical expansion of Minimilism’s narrative, american minimal foregrounds the women who pioneered and innovated within the movement. Historic and contemporary artists including Helen Lundeberg, Florence Arnold, Helen Pashgian, Mary Corse, Lita Albuquerque, and Gisela Colón illuminate unique dimensions in Minimalism, working across industrial materials, light, space, and surface to create groundbreaking work that demands renewed and continual recognition.
At its core, Minimalism asserts that the object simply is. american minimal reaffirms the lasting impact the art movement has had on generations of artists while highlighting its prescient and reductionist nature. In a world saturated with political fractures, consumerist complexities, and an overabundance of visual and digital noise, the exhibition invites viewers to embrace the power of simplicity, the clarity of form, and to contemplatively experience the essential nature of the art object itself. In doing so, american minimal challenges the chaos of contemporary life, offering instead a space for stillness, thought, and presence.
