Kiki Smith and the biennial scale of recent exhibitions
Published on 08/28/2026 at 14:38 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWS
Kiki Smith remains a central presence in major institutional programming in 2026. Her large museum exhibitions and multi-artist projects highlight how a practice grounded in sculpture, printmaking and textiles translates naturally to biennial-scale formats.
Large exhibitions across three continents
At MO.CO. Montpellier, the retrospective Être ici, Maintenant, Partout (Being Here | Now | Everywhere) brings together around 150 works by Kiki Smith from 1983 to the present, spread across three floors of the museum. The show opened on June 13, 2026 and is scheduled to run until October 11, 2026, foregrounding drawings, bronzes, tapestries and photographs in a dense parcours.
In Brooklyn, Smith participates in the group exhibition The Ark at Powerhouse Arts, a traveling project uniting more than ninety artists around animal sculpture and installation. Her sculpture Sentry (2020) appears within a curatorial framework that reads the myth of the Deluge through contemporary concerns about environmental and social change.
Biennial-style formats and thematic shows
Beyond major retrospectives, Kiki Smith features in thematic exhibitions that resemble condensed biennial formats. The survey Contained Movement at Southampton Arts Center in New York, running from July 3 to October 14, 2026, positions her work alongside other artists investigating motion and bodily presence in space. Her inclusion underscores curators’ interest in how Smith’s sculptural and graphic vocabulary translates into questions of corporeal fragility and resilience.
According to Pace Gallery’s artist page, Smith’s work also appears in the exhibition The Ark at Powerhouse Arts, and she is listed in further 2026 institutional projects, showing the breadth of her current programming. These parallel appearances, spread between focused retrospectives and multi-artist shows, mirror how biennials use her work to anchor wider discourses on nature, myth and the human body.
All news and background on Kiki Smith
For a broader overview of Kiki Smith’s exhibitions, market echoes and institutional presence, the AD HOC NEWS archive offers additional reports and updates.
The work core in recent shows
Across these 2026 exhibitions, curators emphasize recurring elements in Kiki Smith’s practice. At MO.CO. Montpellier, the retrospective foregrounds her use of bronze, paper, glass and textile to explore vulnerability, mortality and our entanglement with the animal world. The display of more than one hundred works across three floors provides a museum-scale cross section of her motifs, from hybrid human-animal figures to celestial and bodily diagrams.
At Powerhouse Arts, Smith’s sculpture Sentry extends this interest in animal presence by presenting a watchful creature within an installation entirely composed of animal forms. The Ark’s curatorial framing highlights how her work negotiates care, protection and threat, elements that recur in earlier series of standing figures, reclining bodies and protective beasts.
Where the artist stands now
Overall, Kiki Smith’s work in 2026 occupies a museum and exhibition landscape shaped by large thematic surveys and retrospective formats, with MO.CO. Montpellier’s Être ici, Maintenant, Partout and Powerhouse Arts’ The Ark acting as key recent anchors.
Key facts on Kiki Smith
- Artist: Kiki Smith
- Medium / Genre: Sculpture, drawing, printmaking, installation
- Born: 1954, Nuremberg, Germany
- Place(s) of practice: Studio in New York City
- Active since: Late 1970s, with increased institutional visibility from the late 1980s
- Key work groups: Untitled (Body) series, Animals and natural forms, Tapestries with celestial and anatomical motifs, Glass and bronze heads
- Current/last exhibition: Être ici, Maintenant, Partout (Being Here | Now | Everywhere), MO.CO. Montpellier, June 13–October 11, 2026
- Major collections: MoMA (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Guggenheim Museum (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Amorepacific Museum of Art (Seoul)
- Awards: Notable honors include the 2009 Edward MacDowell Medal in the Arts and various printmaking prizes
- Next date: currently no announced date in the 30-day window
Frequently asked questions about Kiki Smith
Where can Kiki Smith’s work be seen in a large museum setting in 2026?
Her major retrospective Être ici, Maintenant, Partout at MO.CO. Montpellier presents around 150 works from 1983 to the present across three floors, running from June 13 to October 11, 2026.
In which group exhibition does Kiki Smith explore animal themes in 2026?
Smith is featured in The Ark at Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn, a traveling group exhibition of more than ninety artists focused entirely on animal sculptures and installations, where her sculpture Sentry (2020) appears.
How widely is Kiki Smith represented in institutional programs this year?
Artist and exhibition listings for 2026 show her work in the MO.CO. Montpellier retrospective, in the multi-artist show The Ark at Powerhouse Arts, and in further thematic exhibitions such as Contained Movement at Southampton Arts Center in New York.
This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.
