Newcomb Art Museum presents
Lynda Benglis: Elemental |
On view January 21 through May 20, 2027
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Featuring nearly 40 works spanning 1961 to 2024, Lynda Benglis: Elemental reframes the work of American artist and Newcomb College alumna Lynda Benglis. This exhibition foregrounds the role that the Gulf Coast has played in her work and examines how Benglis’ environment, family history, and education have informed her practice — tracing six decades of experimentation by one of the most influential artists of her generation.
Raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Benglis developed a lasting connection to the region’s waterways, wetlands, and industrial landscapes. Elemental reveals how her lifelong meditations on movement, perception, and material transformation are rooted in experiences that predate her emergence on the international art scene.
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A centerpiece of the Lynda Benglis: Elemental exhibition is “Contraband,” a monumental “fallen painting” that Benglis created in 1969 with fluorescent-pigmented latex. Image: Lynda Benglis. Contraband, 1969. Whitney Museum of American Art. ©2026 Lynda Benglis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Christopher Burke Studios.
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Throughout her career, Benglis has challenged conventional distinctions between painting and sculpture, process and object, the organic and the industrial — consistently exploring materials that are in states of transition. The artwork Contraband (1969) is a defining work in her legacy as a sculptor, catalyzing her ideas about what art could be. Described by the artist as a “fallen painting,” the fluorescent, irregularly shaped latex work is the largest surviving example of its kind. Its title references Contraband Bayou, situated less than a mile from Benglis’ childhood home in Lake Charles. This waterway, and its interconnected environments, played a key role in sparking her lifelong curiosity about nature and the physical world.
Benglis' work is permeated by a fluid sense of inside and outside, the embryonic and becoming. Image-making, together with deep material experimentation, is central to her work. Elemental follows the evolution of the artist's practice through rare drawings, paintings, ceramics, glass, and metal, illuminating how a sense of place and the environment profoundly inspired her creative vision.
The artist’s ties to Louisiana remain visible across New Orleans. She created The Wave of the World for the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans. The sculpture is now located in the Big Lake at New Orleans City Park. Her work also appears along the Poydras Street Sculpture Corridor and in collections at the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
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Benglis has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants, among other honors. Her work is held in numerous public collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art in New York; Tate Modern in London; National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Lynda Benglis: Elemental is organized by Laura Blereau, curator of exhibitions at Newcomb Art Museum, in partnership with Pace Gallery and the artist’s studios in New York and Santa Fe. An illustrated exhibition catalogue published by Dancing Foxes Press is forthcoming in 2027. It will include contributions from curator Laura Blereau and art historians Adrian Anagnost, Alex Landry, and Tina Oldknow.
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Lynda Benglis. Lucky Strike, 2024. ©2026 Lynda Benglis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo by Davin Lavikka, courtesy Pace Gallery.
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The exhibition and catalogue are made possible through the generosity of foundations and donors whose support sustains the Newcomb Art Museum. We gratefully acknowledge the Andrew Mellon Foundation, The Eugenie and Joseph Jones Family Foundation, the Elizabeth Jane Moody Fund, the Ellen Conlon Endowed Fund, the Jane Whipple Green Art Fund, the Ernestine Bass Hopkins Fund, the Katherine Steinmayer McLean Endowed Fund, the Evelyn Burton Shaddock Murray Art Fund, the Carol Wiener Sandfield Art Fund, the Elise Levy Steiner Fund, and the Ruth Sterling Fund.
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- "Lynda Benglis: Knotting, Tying, Folding," exhibition at Pace Gallery, Sept. 11–Oct. 24, 2026
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"Lynda Benglis inspires the Dior Haute Couture show in Paris," Artsy, July 13, 2026
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"Feminists in the Visual Arts," Tulanian, September 2018
- "Lost and Found: Lynda Benglis's 'The Wave'," Hyperallergic, March 14, 2014
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"The Artist’s Voice: Lynda Benglis," Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, Oct. 4, 2018
- "Lynda Benglis' "Power Tower," The Helis Foundation, Nov. 17, 2021
- "Lynda Benglis in 'Boundaries'," Art in the 21st Century, Season 6, Art21.org, April 21, 2012
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Newcomb Art Museum offers guided tours and an array of public programs, all free of charge. Designed around the salient themes and images of each exhibition, such activities speak to an array of community and campus interests. https://newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu/programs/
For more information on events and current exhibitions, visit: newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu
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Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane is FREE and Open to the Public.
Regular Hours: Monday – Friday 10 AM – 5 PM | Saturday 11 AM – 4 PM | Sunday Closed
The museum will be closed for the University Thanksgiving Break,
Sunday, Nov. 22 through Sunday, Nov. 29 and will reopen Monday, Nov. 30.
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