William Kentridge: Five Themes

This large-scale exhibition of the work of the internationally renowned South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955) spans nearly three decades of his remarkably prolific career, with an emphasis on projects completed since 2000. Many of these have never before been publicly exhibited in the United States. Combining the political with the poetic, Kentridge's work has made an indelible mark on contemporary art. Dealing with subjects as sobering as apartheid and colonialism, Kentridge often imbues his art with dreamy, lyrical undertones or comedic bits of self-deprecation, making his powerful messages both alluring and ambivalent. Perhaps best known for his stop-motion films of charcoal drawings, the artist also works in prints, collage, sculpture, and the performing arts—opera in particular. This exhibition explores five primary themes in Kentridge's art through a comprehensive selection of his work from the 1980s to the present. Included are works related to the artist's staging and design of Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose, which premieres at New York's Metropolitan Opera in March 2010.

The exhibition's premiere at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) continues through May 31, 2009, and it subsequently travels to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, and select venues in Europe. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue. The MoMA presentation of Five Themes includes many works not seen in other iterations of the exhibition. Alongside key loans from around the world, the expanded selection of works from MoMA's collection underscores the Museum's interdepartmental commitment to the artist's work.