Rashid Johnson: New Poetry
Fri, May 30
|New York
Steel, shea butter, poetry, and presence—Rashid Johnson’s sculptural grid rewrites the architecture of thought and feeling in the heart of the Whitney.
Time & Location
May 30, 2025, 7:00 AM – May 30, 2031, 11:00 AM
New York, 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014, USA
About the event
On view now – Floor 1 + Outdoor Plaza
Whitney Museum of American Art
Stretching from the museum's interior onto its bustling front plaza, Rashid Johnson: New Poetry is a monumental site-specific installation that blurs the boundary between public space and private reflection. Inspired by a line from Amiri Baraka, the work is a living poem—a sculpture that engages with memory, emotion, and intellect through form, material, and movement.
At its core is a massive illuminated steel grid—a continuation of Johnson’s signature sculptural series begun in 2004. This skeletal framework houses ceramic vessels, carved shea butter blocks, poetry books, and TV monitors displaying his silent film Black Yoga. Together, these elements echo the complexity of the human mind, condensing chaos, culture, and calm into a unified visual meditation.
Johnson, known for embedding personal and cultural history into powerful formal arrangements, offers New Poetry as both archive and altar. It speaks to Black…