Chicago
Juan Muñoz
The Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
September 14–December 8, 2002
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Boulevard
January 24–March 30, 2003
New Museum
235 Bowery
April 21–July 28, 2002
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue at Seventh Street, SW
October 18–January 13, 2001
Juan Muñoz’s series of cast-resin and bronze tableaux occupied a full floor of the Dia Center in New York in 1996–97, but the Hirshhorn exhibition comprises the Spanish sculptor’s first career survey in the States. It also takes on added poignancy in the wake of the artist’s untimely recent death at the age of 48. A cluster of Borgesian tropes—the balcony, the trompe l’oeil floor, the dwarf—run through Muñoz’s strange theatrical settings, featuring figures enigmatically assembled as if for conversation. The catalogue to the exhibition, which includes work made since the mid-’80s, includes essays by Art Institute curator Neal Benezra, Hirshhorn curator Olga Viso, and critic Michael Brenson.