“PARABLES OF FRIENDSHIP” was the first comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the work of David Medalla (1938–2020), who signed off on early plans for the show but died just months before it opened. Viewers could enter the main exhibition space by mounting and descending a seemingly functionless staircase. The first artwork visible from the top of the stairs was a family of five Plexiglas tubes of varying height, all emerging from a low round pedestal on the floor. Depending on factors like the day’s temperature and air pressure, the humming and gurgling contraption spewed soap bubbles in