Richard Hunt: Early Masterworks is the second largest exhibition of the artist’s work in New York for over 50 years. In 1971, at the age of 35, Hunt achieved a historic milestone by becoming the first African American sculptor to have a landmark retrospective at MoMA, New York with a presentation of works from 1955–71. The exhibition at White Cube New York mirrors that period, including the restaging of a number of works that were presented in Hunt’s MoMA retrospective.

On view at MCASD La Jolla, The Inaugural Collection Installation highlights Richard Hunt's Linear Peregrine Forms (1962). “Hunt had indeed been influenced by Gonzalez's idea of 'drawing in space' and by David Smith’s use of planes, and these influences helped him to express his own unique journey. Beyond tradition, he created a space of liberation in his imagination, drawing on American history, the history of the Hunt family, ancient mythology, and the cultural environment of Chicago’s South Side.”

(Richard Hunt, “Richard Hunt: A Hero’s Construction,” LeRonn P. Brooks, Gregory R. Miller & Co., New York, 2022)

Chicago sculptor Richard Hunt is an acclaimed artist with major commissions on view across the United States. He sees the arc segments in this hanging piece as a reference to the “swinging motion and wing-like forms” of the “band of angels,” made famous in the beloved Negro spiritual, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. According to the artist, the piece pays homage to Negro spirituals, and “their defining place in early colored religious, social and cultural self-consciousness.”

Slowly Toward the North (1984), a sculpture now on view in Crystal Bridges’ North Forest, commemorates the Great Migration, the large movement of Black Americans from the rural South to cities in the North from 1918-1970. The work combines two symbolically significant forms: a train and a push plow. The train form emerges from the steam locomotive’s driving wheels and front-end cowcatcher whose components present themselves prominently in the work. Viewed from the opposing side, the work recalls the forms of stylized handles, handlebars, plowshare and wheel of a push plow cultivator used by Hunt in the South when visiting family. The two primary elements point in opposite directions; the locomotive faces north, an allusion to the mode of transportation that brought many Black southerners to the industrial North. The plow points toward the agrarian South, representing the human labor (rather than animal or machines) used to till the earth.

Richard Hunt established himself as one of the most important and prolific “monument makers” of the past fifty years. He created more than 150 large-scale public and private commissions, placed in cities across the United States. Richard Hunt: Monumental seeks to ground this work within Hunt’s broader artistic practice and more critically contextualize his tremendous contributions to the history of American sculpture over the past seventy-five years.

Richard Hunt explored the graphic potential of organic and three-dimensional forms during a residency at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1965. Working with master printer Kenneth Tyler, he produced a suite of 8 lithographs entitled Details, along with 17 independent prints, which use a range of visual strategies to engage with the artist’s sculptural practice. Richard Hunt: Details features a selection of the prints that Hunt made at Tamarind to show how lithography complemented and advanced the artist’s interests as a sculptor. 

Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus  puts art from the CMA’s permanent collection in conversation with a vanguard of emerging and midcareer Black artists, as each explores the fundaments of art making, embracing and challenging art history. The connections between the artworks and the themes in this exhibition are best described both as currents, which are more predictable and easier to trace, and as constellations, which are less predictable and more difficult to follow. Intimate in scale, yet broad in scope, Currents and Constellations illuminates singular works created by Black artists working in the United States to broaden visitors’ sense of Black artistic production.

This exhibition draws its title, Scholar’s Rock or Stone of Hope or Love of Bronze, from a monumental bronze sculpture that exemplifies Hunt’s recent practice. Over the last six years, he has engaged in a durational approach of continually adding, removing, and reshaping the work, investigating the meaning of bronze both in relation to its mythological and material attributes, as well as its inherent transformative possibilities. This massive bronze is complemented by two other large-scale stainless steel sculptures, as well as a selection of smaller-scaled bronzes, all of which were completed in the last 20 years. 

Richard Hunt's Linear Spatial Theme, Number 2, 1962 has been on view at the Indianapolis Museum of Art since 2018. In addition, the museum acquired Standing Form, 1961 in 2022. A close look at Standing Form reveals the bolts and other scrap Hunt incorporated into this work, elevating detritus to the level of fine art. Considered the foremost African American abstract sculptor, Hunt is known for works that incorporate unconventional media and allude to plant, human, and animal forms. A pioneer of welded sculpture along with Indiana native David Smith (whose work can be seen in the adjacent American galleries), Hunt scoured automobile junkyards for materials during the 1960s and transformed cast off automobile bumpers and fenders into elegant three dimensional compositions.

Richard Hunt: Synthesis focuses on formative periods in the career of American sculptor Richard Hunt, whose 150-plus public commissions have made him a legendary figure in modern and contemporary sculpture. Hunt has also been a formidable presence in redefining the role of public sculpture in the late 20th and early 21st century. His parallel studio career shows his experimentation with a variety of media, methods and formal considerations, but has been underexplored critically as an essential aspect of his later success.

Richard Hunt: Framed and Extended explores three lesser-known but integral aspects of Hunt’s art—printmaking, small-scale sculpture and wall sculpture—that share a vocabulary with the public commissions and express the same sense of lightness and vitality. The exhibition’s title, drawn from one of Hunt’s wall sculptures, testifies to the artist’s practice of sculpture as the three-dimensional counterpart to drawing.

The exhibition brings together some seventeen works that span Hunt’s career. These range from the bold, angular lines of his print Untitled (1965) and the sweeping, gestural combination of abstracted organic forms and hard-edged geometry in the freestanding Hybrid Form #3 (1970) to his Wall Piece Two and Wall Piece Seven (both 1989) and the recent freestanding Spiral Odyssey II (2014).

Richard Hunt, a longtime resident of Chicago and one of the city's most accomplished artists, has contributed significantly to the history of abstract sculpture. Hunt turns eighty in 2015, and the MCA celebrates his life and artistic achievements with an MCA DNA exhibition of his sculptures and drawings, dating from the 1950s through the 1990s. These works reflect the development of Hunt's style—from smaller objects made of welded scrap materials to monumentally scaled metal sculptures. 

"Richard Hunt: Sixty Years of Sculpture" celebrates the career of the respected and prolific Chicago sculptor on the eve of his 80th birthday. The exhibition features 60 objects dating from 1954 to 2014, drawn mostly from the artist’s own collection. Born in Chicago in 1935, Hunt attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was honored with a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971. Since that time, he has worked in the same Chicago studio, producing over 150 commissions of public sculpture for cities across the U.S. In 2014, Hunt was among the first recipients of the Fifth Star Awards, honoring Chicago artists whose careers have most deeply impacted the cultural life of the city.

The Sculpture of Richard Hunt was the first retrospective for an African American sculptor at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), when Hunt was only 35 years old. The show then traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition of 55 sculptures, eight drawings, and 12 prints covered the development of his work during the previous 15 years — from the early "found-object" pieces, through the more linear "drawings-in-space," to the denser, more monolithic, enclosed forms of the late 1960's. 

The Sculpture of Richard Hunt was the first retrospective for an African American sculptor at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), when Hunt was only 35 years old. The show then traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition of 55 sculptures, eight drawings, and 12 prints covered the development of his work during the previous 15 years — from the early "found-object" pieces, through the more linear "drawings-in-space," to the denser, more monolithic, enclosed forms of the late 1960's.