Negotiating Rapture brings together the work of Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, James Lee Byars, Lucio Fontana, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anselm Kiefer, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and Bill Viola. These artists are exhibited together in order to reveal their diverse expressions of a shared longing: the basic and enduring human urge to transcend the ordinary and experience the sublime. Juxtaposed with a range of works by Old Masters and examples from architecture, literature, and anthropology, the works in Negotiating Rapture show how artists, as creators, move beyond common experience to a state approaching religious ecstasy and how we, as viewers, can in turn discover a deeper involvement in our own humanity.

This exhibition was conceived and organized by Richard Francis, with the assistance of Sophia Shaw, and presented on the occasion of the inauguration of the new museum.