Craft Around the Country

A Six-Decade Masterclass in Form and Abstraction

Nexus, a new survey of Martin Puryear’s long, prolific career, comes to the Cleveland Museum of Art this spring.

By Jon Spayde
April 27, 2026

Digital Only

Exhibitions

Free To Read

Photo by Ron Amstutz

Big Phrygian, 2010–14, painted red cedar, 58 x 40 x 76 in.

The work of Martin Puryear belongs in a venue like the Cleveland Museum of Art, says Emily Liebert, co-curator of the museum’s new show, Martin Puryear: Nexus, on view until August 9.

“I worked on the exhibition with Reto Thüring, who was formerly at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the show opened,” she says. “We had the idea that it would be great to see Puryear’s work in the context of encyclopedic or comprehensive museums like the MFA and the Cleveland. He’s an American artist, but his work has been informed by so many different traditions of making, so many different art histories.”

Over a six-decade career, the lauded sculptor, now 84, has created a body of work that combines a generally minimalist and abstract approach with illuminating, often witty gestures toward the realms of politics, history, art history, and nature.

Throughout, his work expresses a devotion to craft practice: he favors wood and often transforms it almost unrecognizably, but he also works in glass, marble, and metal, examples of which are on display here. Along with rarely exhibited paintings and prints, the show comprises nearly 50 objects all told.

Photo by Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY

Bower, 1980, Sitka spruce, pine, copper tacks, 64.25 x 94.5 x 26 in.

“[Puryear is] an American artist, but his work has been informed by so many different traditions of making, so many different art histories.”

— Emily Liebert

Puryear is an inveterate traveler who draws inspiration from an array of global traditions, from European Renaissance painting to French basketry to West African sculpture and African American art, Liebert notes.

“It’s been almost 20 years since his last major survey of Martin’s career, which was at the Museum of Modern Art, so we approached him about four years ago,” Liebert says. “He thought about it and eventually said yes. He’s been involved all the way through.”

Nexus brings together iconic pieces such as Big Phrygian (2010–14), the artist’s elegant, witty homage to the red cap worn by revolutionaries in 18th-century France and Haiti, with works that have had less public exposure, such as 1987’s Noblesse O, an eight-foot-tall pointed structure made of red cedar painted silver that evokes an inverted funnel. His devotion to craft traditions is explicit in Bower (1980), an openwork piece of woven spruce and pine that suggests both a basket and something like a diagram of physical or electronic forces.

“The work has a real resonance now,” Liebert says. “It’s abstract, but it’s so much a reflection of the world that we inhabit, as seen through the lenses of global and social histories, and with exquisite attention to making and materials.”

Photo courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art

Noblesse O., 1987, red cedar, aluminum paint, 98.5 x 58 x 46 in.

Photos by Shelly Duncan

Installation views of Puryear's work at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Jon Spayde is a writer and editor in Saint Paul, Minnesota. A former contributing editor to American Craft, he writes on art, psychology, education, and personal growth for a number of regional and national publications.

Learn more about Martin Puryear: Nexus online.

Website

Before you go!

We believe that making creates a meaningful world, and we hope you do, too. Deeply researched and impactful journalism on the craft community is in short supply. At the same time, being featured in craft-centered media and articles can have a major effect on a maker’s or artist’s livelihood, particularly those who are just starting in their career. You can help support our mission and the work of makers around the country by becoming a member or by making a gift today.

Thank you!
American Craft Council

Join Donate