A quarter-century survey fills Wright’s spiral rotunda.
Carol Bove is the first museum survey and largest exhibition to date of the American artist, tracing pivotal shifts in her career across more than 25 years. The presentation transforms the entire rotunda, with sculptures, installations, paintings, and works on paper integrated into an exhibition design that foregrounds the unique spatial dynamics of Wright’s architecture.
Bove’s practice ranges from early installations involving bookshelves and archival materials to the large, contorted “collage sculptures” that have made her a central figure in contemporary sculpture — bending and crushing steel tubing, combining it with concrete, wood, and found metal, and often coating forms in richly colored automotive paint to create works that hover between formal abstraction and improvisational gesture.
Two new bodies of work make their debut: a monumental group of steel compositions conceived for the rotunda’s spiral space, and a series of wall-mounted aluminum panel works. Attentive to the visitor’s journey over more than a quarter mile up the museum’s sloping ramps, Bove has incorporated spaces for rest, reflection, and play — including comfortable seating built into the architecture, a tactile library with materials from her studio, and artist-designed chess sets on the rotunda floor that visitors are invited to play.
The exhibition is curated by Katherine Brinson, Daskalopoulos Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim. Bove also collaborated with Farrow & Ball to create custom wall colors throughout the Frank Lloyd Wright building — colors chosen to guide visitors through the space and shape how the work is encountered.
Carol Bove is on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through August 2, 2026.
