Edward Kienholz - Exhibitions

Exhibitions

Nancy Reddin Kienholz has continued to administer the joint artistic estate, organizing shows and exhibitions.

Retrospectives of Kienholz's work have been infrequent, due to the difficulty and expense of assembling fragile, literally room-sized sculptures and installations from widely-dispersed collections around the world. Kienholz work has often been difficult to view, both because of its subject matter, and the logistics of displaying it.

Relatively few of the major works had been on display in the US, the Kienholz's native land, though American museums have now started to feature their work more prominently, especially after a major retrospective (posthumous) exhibition in 1996 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Bowers Museum (Santa Ana, CA), the Dayton Art Institute, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the University of Arizona Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) are among the public collections holding work by Kienholz. From May 6 to June 19, 2010, Kienholz's Roxy's was meticulously reconstructed and visible through the aperture of two panoramic windows at David Zwirner Gallery in New York City.

The diverse and freely improvised materials and methods used in Kienholz works pose an unusual challenge to art conservators who try to preserve the artist's original intent and appearances. Treatment of Back Seat Dodge '38 for clothes moths presented an awkward situation, which was deftly addressed by the Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum in behalf of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, owner of the artwork.