Mimi Smith survey exhibition opens at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in February

Mimi Smith, Slave Ready: Maternal, 1996.
Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will present Mimi Smith: Dear Art, A Sixty-Year Survey, marking the first major museum survey dedicated to six decades of work by artist Mimi Smith. The exhibition will occupy the entirety of the museum’s second-floor galleries from Feb. 7 to Sept. 19, 2027.

Organized by Diana Bowes Chief Curator Amy Smith-Stewart, the survey spans sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, and artists’ books. The exhibition title originates from a series of personal letters Smith began writing in 1975 to an imaginary lover named Art, documenting the emotional arc of her career.

Born in 1942 in Brookline, Massachusetts, Smith received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and her MFA from Rutgers University. In the mid-1960s, she debuted her groundbreaking clothing sculptures, which combined household materials like steel wool with fashion to explore feminine identity and domestic expectations.

The retrospective traces Smith’s ongoing engagement with social and political themes, including reproductive rights, wage inequality, war, gun violence, and environmental issues. Works on display include her 1970s room silhouettes made with measuring tape, 1980s computer-language paintings, news-focused installations, and her ongoing Timelines series begun in 1999.

Alongside major series from the 1960s to the present, the exhibition features new, unexhibited, and rarely seen individual works, as well as an archive of ephemera and publications documenting her political activism. The exhibition will also be accompanied by the artist’s first monograph, featuring an essay by Smith-Stewart.

Smith’s career includes grant awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Her works are held in public collections internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Getty, and the Walker Art Center.

Exhibit details

Mimi Smith: Dear Art, A Sixty-Year Survey,
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum • 258 Main St, Ridgefield, CT 06877
February 7– September 19, 2027

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Mimi Smith survey exhibition opens at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in February