Hauser & Wirth have announced worldwide representation of Philadelphia-born, Paris-based artist and writer Barbara Chase-Riboud.
Over the course of her seven-decade career, Chase-Riboud has created a revolutionary body of work defined equally by its inventiveness, technical prowess and fearless engagement with transcultural histories.
We are honored that Barbara Chase-Riboud has chosen to join the Hauser & Wirth family of artists
says Iwan Wirth.
An assured innovator, Barbara’s devotion to the visual expansion of sculpture beyond Western modes of representation has cemented her as a pioneering voice of 20th and 21st-century art. Over the course of a truly incredible life and career, she has fearlessly challenged the traditional hierarchies of sculpture, bringing forth an original artistic language that is wholly her own, and which deftly explores themes of identity, memory, place and power. Her work has never been so relevant, and we look forward to reaffirming her place in art history.
The gallery will collaborate with curator and advisor, Erin Jenoa Gilbert, who has managed Chase-Riboud’s exhibitions, publications and acquisitions for the last four years.
Now open at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York is ‘The Encounter: Barbara Chase-Riboud/Alberto Giacometti.’ This landmark exhibition pairs the pioneering work of two artists whose breakthroughs have shaped the course of modern sculpture. The presentation was developed in close collaboration with Chase-Riboud and the Fondation Giacometti, Paris.
Chase-Riboud’s sculpture and drawings are in museum collections around the world. She holds the distinction of being the youngest artist to enter the collections of MoMA, which first acquired her work in 1955 when Chase-Riboud was 15 years old. Her work resides in the permanent collections of many major institutions, including the General Services Administration, New York NY; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; National Collections of France; Newark Museum, Newark NJ; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans LA; New-York Historical Society Museum, New York NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA; Smithsonian African American Museum, Washington D.C.; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT, and Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore MD.
Barbara Chase-Riboud will inaugurate Hauser & Wirth’s new location at Wooster Street in Soho, New York this fall.
About the artist
Barbara Chase-Riboud’s recent exhibitions include: Alberto Giacometti / Barbara Chase-Riboud: Standing Women of Venice – Standing Black Woman of Venice, Institut Giacometti, Paris (2021); Barbara Chase-Riboud: Avatars, La Verrière, Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Brussels (2020); Barbara Chase-Riboud – Malcolm X: Complete, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY (2017); Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Steles, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (2013); and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (2014) among many others.
Parallel to her visual and sculptural practice, Chase-Riboud is a distinguished poet and writer of historical fiction. In 1974 she published her first book of poetry, From Memphis & Peking, which was edited by Toni Morrison, and in 1979 she published her first novel Sally Hemings. Her poetry collections include Portrait of a Nude Woman as Cleopatra (1987) and Everytime a Knot is Undone, a God is Released (2014), and her widely translated novels include: Valide: A Novel of the Harem (1986); Echo of Lions (1989); The President’s Daughter (1994); Hottentot Venus: A Novel (2003); and The Great Mrs. Elias: A Novel (2022). In October 2022, Princeton University Press will release I Always Knew: A Memoir, an intimate and vivid portrait of Chase-Riboud’s life as told through the letters she wrote to her mother, Vivian Mae Chase, between 1957 and 1991.
