Collection

Description

The MCA’s permanent collection includes more than 2,500 artworks that span media and movements from the 1920s to the present. Although not on permanent display, works from the collection appear regularly in our many rotating exhibitions. The entire collection, with images and descriptions, is presented here for the first time. Explore it by artist, title, or creation date. Images in this section are published for educational use under the umbrella of the Fair Use doctrine.

Artist last name index

Title index

Decade index

A primarily beige-looking canvas is actually composed of many small dots of light blues, pinks, oranges, and purples.

...Pindell has said, “in graduate school I remember that a woman artist would be criticized if she used pink. If a man used pink it was considered a mix of red and white… . When I noticed this, I started using the things that I was told not to use. Glitter. Pink. This was my way of resisting.”

Short A primarily beige-looking canvas is actually composed of many small dots of light blues, pinks, oranges, and purples.

Works on View

On view
Nicholas Africano, I Get Hurt, 1980
On view
Lynda Benglis, Bhai, 1981
1. Short A golden object, that may or may not be enclosing something, is composed of many folds almost like a stiff fabric, but appears to be hand-shaped metal.
On view
Mark Bradford, Thriller, 2009
Image not available
On view
DIS, Apology, 2016
On view
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled" (The End), 1990
1. Short A rectangular column of white paper with a black border rests on a concrete floor in a neat stack that is nearly as tall as the paper is wide.
On view
David Hammons, Praying to Safety, 1997
On view
Jene Highstein, Floating World, 1986
1. Short Photograph of a person-sized rounded outdoor sculpture made of grey, textured stone
On view
Jim Isermann, Flower Painting, 1986
On view
Arthur Jafa, Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death, 2016
On view
Jasper Johns, In Memory of My Feelings - Frank O'Hara, 1961
Image not available
On view
Deana Lawson, Sons of Cush, 2016
On view
Jason Lazarus, Standing at the Grave of Emmett Till, day of exhumation, June 1st, 2005 (Alsip, IL), 2005
On view
Glenn Ligon, Untitled, 1992
1. Short A framed text, black on white, reads "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background". This phrase is repeated and gradually becomes distorted until illegible at the bottom.
2. Long A body of black text is printed on a white rectangle with even borders of white space on all four sides. The text reads "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background," repeated without punctuation or line breaks to separate the repetitions. The text is printed in a stenciled font with gritty smudges that become more and more prominent as the text continues, eventually blending with the text at the bottom of the image, rendering it almost illegible. It has a narrow black frame.
On view
Glenn Ligon, Untitled (Study #1 for Prisoner of Love), 1992
1. Short Black stenciled text that reads "WE ARE THE INK THAT GIVES THE WHITE PAGE A MEANING" repeats for twenty-nine lines, gradually becoming distorted until it's almost illegible at the bottom.
On view
Kerry James Marshall, Mementos, 1998
On view
Ana Mendieta, Untitled from the Silueta series, 1973–77
1. Short A statue made of loosely woven branches fills a niche in a crumbling stone wall. The statue is in the rough shape of a human figure with its elbows bent and arms raised to its sides.
On view
Ana Mendieta, Untitled from the Silueta series, 1973–77
1. Short A photograph of a hard dirt landscape with a rectangle of planted grass that frames a depression filled with white flowers in the silhouette of a human body.
On view
Ana Mendieta, Untitled from the Silueta series, 1973–77
On view
Ana Mendieta, Untitled from the Silueta series, 1973–77
1. Short A white piece of fabric with a blood red imprint of a human figure is suspended on the back wall of a stone alcove. Dried branches rest in the bottom of the alcove.
On view
Bruce Nauman, Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain, 1983
1. Short A circle of words formed by neon lights in green, blue, pink, and yellow reads, clockwise from the top: "LOVE HATE PLEASURE PAIN LIFE DEATH."
On view
Paul Pfeiffer, Fragment of a Crucifixion (after Francis Bacon), 1999
1. Short A palm-sized digital projector is mounted a few inches away from a white wall. It projects a small image of a uniformed athlete standing in a crowded arena.
Image not available
On view
Pope.L, Crying Painting, 2016
Image not available
On view
George Rickey, Two Lines Oblique, 1968
On view
Thomas Schütte, Ganz Grosse Geister (Big Spirits XL), 2004
1. Short Three yellow sculptures of abstract human figures stand as if communicating with each other outdoors in an urban setting.
2. Long Three yellow and white forms are installed on an outdoor terrace. The forms resemble human bodies, yet they have no faces. The heads of the forms are created from coiled, hard textured material and the bodies are similarly constructed of coiled material, arranged into torsos, arms and legs. The scale of the figures is about double the size of an average person and the are arranged about a half of a figure length apart from each other. The figure on the left appears to have its head tilted to the sky, while the center figure faces to the right, where the third figure bends lightly towards the ground, hand upraised. The bright color of the figures contrasts with urban scene in the background: behind the figures a black fence, green leafy trees and tall gray buildings are visible. The sky is bright blue and the bright light of mid-day casts sharp shadows below the figures.
On view
Andres Serrano, Untitled (Knifed to Death I and II), 1992
1. Short Two side-by-side photos each show a light-skinned hand extending away from the other. The hands each have small, bloodied wounds on their wrists and blackened fingertips.
On view
Erin Shirreff, Sculpture for Snow, 2011
On view
Takis, Magnetic Mobile, c. 1964
Image not available
On view
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Black Love), 1992

Gloved hands review a 4x5 color transparency and a roll of 35mm black and white film over a light box with a viewing loupe.

To request images—including exhibition installation views and permanent collection works—or MCA-created text or media, fill out a media and image application.

Short Gloved hands review a 4x5 color transparency and a roll of 35mm black and white film over a light box with a viewing loupe.

Works that are titled Untitled

Short A blue-and-white graph shaped like a ring with one-sixth solid and the rest checkered is titled "As on Nov 2015."