Fragments of Memory
Sep 20, 2024 – Jan 26, 2025
Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, TX
Fragments of Memory, a selection of works from the Menil’s permanent collection, explores the ways in which the past imbues present experiences.
In their drawings, the featured artists take up commonplace embodiments of personal and collective memory, such as scrapbooks, snapshots, notes, relics, and odes, to reimagine how we might access fraught memories and contested histories.
Memories are incomplete renditions of the past—composites built from slivers of recollections that reveal the emotions behind moments. The drawings presented in this exhibition were created from the mid-20th century to the recent years and represent different ways that artists reanimate the past and propose new understandings of our present.
Works on display from Luc Tuymans (b. 1958) and Jasper Johns (b. 1930) explore how memory fragments as time passes, while pieces by artists like Sari Dienes and Gael Stack layer objects and imagery from their family and friends, presenting a picture of consciousness.
Other artists featured in this exhibition include Wardell Milan, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Danh Vo, Denyse Thomasos and more.
Fragments of Memory is curated by Kelly Montana, Associate Curator, Menil Drawing Institute.
This exhibition is generously supported by Diane and Michael Cannon; Caroline Huber; Susan and Francois de Menil; Sheila Noeth and Ted Dohmen; and by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.
