Kinetic Traces

The National Academy of Design is pleased to present Kinetic Traces, a group exhibition showcasing the work of the twenty-eight artists and architects elected as National Academicians in the Fall of 2024. Working across a wide range of media and formats—from painting and sculpture to video and architectural design—these Academicians demonstrate the fundamentally interdisciplinary ethos at the heart of the National Academy since its founding in 1825. 
 

The newly inducted Academician class of artists and architects includes Ann Agee, Diana Al-Hadid, Sara Caples, Diana Cooper, Lise Anne Couture, Rochelle Feinstein, Chie Fueki, Gajin Fujita, Maren Hassinger, Hugh Hayden, Florian Idenburg, Everardo Jefferson, Mernet Larsen, Marilyn Lerner, Jing Liu, Anthony McCall, Beverly McIver, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Senga Nengudi, Sheila Pepe, Hani Rashid, Jesse Reiser, David Row, Amy Sherald, Ken Smith, Nader Tehrani, Masami Teraoka and Nanako Umemoto.
 

Kinetic Traces highlights the array of imaginative perspectives, range of creative achievements and depth of craftsmanship of each artist and architect. Though seemingly heterogeneous, the works in the exhibition coalesce around three primary thematic groupings. The emphasis on public-facing adaptability and community engagement are consistent features of the work included in the architecture section, while the artists grouped around corporeality reimagine and recontextualize their materials in ways that expand our understanding of the body and its relation to space. Finally, the artists linked together in light examine its material properties and its ability to be the source of form and a gateway to spirituality as well.
 

Artists Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi make sculptures that use nontraditional materials to explore movement and inertia by transforming what is typically hard and rigid into being fluid and supple to create new material relations and possibilities. Anthony McCall’s ‘solid-light’ installations translate the immateriality of light itself into three-dimensional environments, while Beverly McIver, known for her sensitive and complex portraits and self-portraits, considers the social foundation of what is intimate and subjective. Amalia Mesa Bains’ large-scale installations reference home altars and explore the spiritual practices in Mexican culture.
 

Through public-facing projects, the architects in the exhibition provide glimpses into their creative processes and conceptual approaches. A model from NADAAA, Nader Tehrani’s Boston-based firm, shows how their renovation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 15,000 square-foot galleries for Ancient Near Eastern and Cypriot Art preserves links among the cultures of such a vast region. SO–IL, the Brooklyn-based firm led by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, presents models from the new art museum they designed for Williams College, which they conceived as an interdisciplinary campus hub to foster a unique ecology of social, programmatic and educational exchange in direct dialogue with its natural surroundings. Academicians in the 2024 class emerged in their respective fields during the latter half of the 20th Century, a period of time defined by social, political and economic reorganization in tandem with rapid technological advancement and upheaval. While navigating a shifting landscape, these artists and architects, each in their own way, have been using their respective mediums to respond and consider the conditions around them and which provide the ultimate contexts in which their work is conceived and experienced.
 

Kinetic Traces is curated by Natalia Viera Salgado, Associate Curator.