{"id":281230,"date":"2026-02-12T23:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/281230\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T23:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T23:17:13","slug":"chicagos-nick-cave-is-digging-up-americas-bones-at-a-fraught-moment-for-the-smithsonian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/281230\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago\u2019s Nick Cave is digging up America\u2019s bones at a fraught moment for the Smithsonian"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a cerulean blue Tuesday in early January, artist Nick Cave directs an uncanny scene unfolding along the Chicago lakefront. Three enormous mammoths lumber south toward the city\u2019s silhouetted skyline.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s around 11 a.m., but the scene feels out of time, hovering between past and present.<\/p>\n

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Built from open metal frames wrapped in long, wispy hair, each creature is animated by four people walking in unison. But their bodies are not the kind of Woolly mammoth reconstructions typically found in museum dioramas. Moving across the horizon, the mammoths appear partially decomposed, as if recently unearthed from an ancient, Arctic permafrost.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop!\u201d Cave calls out, his voice carried by the blustering winter wind. \u201cLet\u2019s do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Dancers<\/p>\n

Cave designed the ancient creatures in \u201cMammoth\u201d with the Chicago metal fabrication studio Manifold. The works are animated by four people walking in unison. In January, the artist took them for a stroll on the Chicago lakefront.<\/p>\n

Anthony Vazquez\/Sun-Times<\/p>\n

Art in a moment of \u2018incredible upheaval\u2019<\/p>\n

The mammalian puppets are in fact the stars of Cave\u2019s new film installation, \u201cRoam,\u201d one of several works the artist has created for his eponymous exhibition \u201cMammoth\u201d at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The exhibition, which opens on Friday and remains on view through January of next year, is the museum\u2019s largest ever single-artist commission. The decision to showcase a queer Black artist is not lost on Cave, who lives and works in Chicago. And the eerie sense of resurrection, he says, is intentional.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was reflecting on what\u2019s going on at the Smithsonian in terms of erasing history and shifting the narrative,\u201d he reflects. \u201cThis whole notion of disappearing, dissolving.\u201d And yet, he adds, history has a way of resurfacing. \u201cThat\u2019s our mammoth. We\u2019re still digging up bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Nick<\/p>\n

\u201cI was reflecting on what\u2019s going on at the Smithsonian in terms of erasing history and shifting the narrative,\u201d Cave reflects. \u201cThis whole notion of disappearing, dissolving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthony Vazquez\/Sun-Times<\/p>\n

Last March, the Trump administration issued the executive order titled \u201cRestoring Truth and Sanity to American History,\u201d which criticizes the Smithsonian for promoting what it calls \u201cdivisive race-centered ideology.\u201d The order puts the museum campus under federal scrutiny by authorizing reviews of exhibitions and programming. The goal, it reads, is to emphasize \u201cAmerican exceptionalism\u201d and remove what the Trump administration calls \u201cpartisan narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials have warned federal funding could be withheld if the museums don\u2019t comply. But the directive has prompted resignations and high-profile artist cancellations, such as by painter Amy Sherald.<\/p>\n

In a moment of \u201cincredible upheaval,\u201d says Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art and acting head curator at SAAM, \u201cNick is proposing a way to navigate through that change, a way to look at our environment and our heritage, take solace in it, honor and learn from it, and look toward creativity as a way to locate your place in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 67, Cave is best known for his Soundsuits,<\/a> folkloric, futuristic sculptural forms that blur the line between costume and armor. Sometimes glittering, other times spectral, the suits evoke both Maurice Sendak\u2019s \u201cwild things\u201d and the heightened drama of Schiaparelli couture.<\/p>\n

Cave began making the Soundsuits in 1991 in response to the brutal Los Angeles Police Department beating of Rodney King, a Black man whose assault ignited the 1992 L.A. riots, and national outrage, over police brutality. Since then, Cave estimates he has made nearly 500 suits, each an expression of his expansive, inimitable imagination.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Nick<\/p>\n

Cave is best known for his Soundsuits, folkloric, futuristic sculptural forms that blur the line between costume and armor. Here the Soundsuits are pictured in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2022.<\/p>\n

A former dancer who trained at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Cave has long straddled the worlds of fashion, performance and art. He is a professor of fashion studies at the School of the Art Institute and has exhibited widely across the United States, including major solo exhibitions at the Guggenheim, MASS MoCA, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.<\/p>\n

In Chicago, one of Cave\u2019s Soundsuits is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago as part of the show, \u201cCity in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago.\u201d Two additional pieces hang in the Art Institute of Chicago exhibition \u201cOn Loss and Absence.\u201d On the South Side, Cave designed the floral-inspired mosaic ceiling at the Washington Park Green Line stop and will unveil a new commission for the Obama Presidential Center later this spring.<\/p>\n

Cave and his partner in life and art, Bob Faust, also run a gallery from their expansive live-work space, Facility, in Old Irving Park.<\/p>\n

While Cave\u2019s work seems to dance, often literally, around overt political declarations, the artist doesn\u2019t shy from pointed critique. \u201cIs the work somewhat political?\u201d Cave asks, rhetorically. \u201cOh yeah, it\u2019s in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of Cave\u2019s creations hold grief and celebration, agony and ecstasy, in equal measure.<\/p>\n

A legacy of craftmaking and meticulous handiwork<\/p>\n

For Cave, the Smithsonian show began with a personal excavation. \u201cI started thinking, how was I made?\u201d says Cave. \u201cHow did I become who I am?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cave grew up one of seven brothers in Missouri. Many of his favorite memories were shaped on his grandparents\u2019 farm where he was surrounded by aunts and uncles who made things with their hands. \u201cThey were all just making stuff anyway, but didn\u2019t call it art,\u201d recalls Cave. \u201cIt was really just hobbies, craftsmanship. Things they did on Saturdays and Sundays.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a boy, Cave especially loved watching his grandmother work. \u201cAt seven o\u2019clock, she would say, \u2018Knick Knack, go pull my quilt out of the chest,\u2019\u201d he recalls, \u201cand she would sit down and just start to quilt.\u201d He also remembers how his grandmother would cut clothing patterns from brown paper bags, pin them directly onto one of her many grandchildren, and assemble garments in a matter of hours.<\/p>\n

But the making was only part of it. Pageantry mattered, too. When a quilt or painting was finished, \u201cthere would be this big reveal,\u201d says Cave. \u201cSomething about it was magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Beads<\/p>\n

The artist is one of seven boys in a family of makers who spent their weekends stitching, beading and making things with their hands. He incorporates beadwork into his new exhibition.<\/p>\n

Anthony Vazquez\/Sun-Times<\/p>\n

Cave\u2019s memories weave through exhibition, which includes \u201cRoam;\u201d a series of five towering lifeguard chairs; figurative bronze sculptures molded from Cave\u2019s own body; and a 60-foot beaded curtain that hangs over a mural designed by Cave\u2019s partner, Faust, inspired by the Missouri farm. Cave\u2019s mammoths also appear throughout the gallery spaces, some in full form, others reduced to skulls or tusks.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s most intimate work, however, sprawls across a 70-foot light table. Titled \u201cA Lit History,\u201d the massive assemblage is created from thousands of objects \u2014 pie pans, nails, trivets, bingo ball cages, thimbles, crocheted doilies, metal coils \u2014 that Cave has collected over the last three decades, many of them from his grandparents\u2019 house. Those unadorned, everyday items sit alongside elaborate pieces of Cave\u2019s own invention: veils fashioned from plastic ties and price tags, hats assembled from knobbed keychain rings, and garments stitched from tens of thousands of buttons.<\/p>\n

It registers in two ways at once. From a distance, \u201cA Lit History\u201d provokes sheer bewilderment and wonder; up close, the display reveals intricate and meticulous craftsmanship.<\/p>\n

\u201cNick has this unique ability to see beauty and art in things that people would otherwise be so quick to discard or not value,\u201d says Michelle Boone, the president of the Poetry Foundation and former cultural commissioner, who has known Cave for years.<\/p>\n

Boone recalls a visit to the Randolph Street Market that revealed Cave\u2019s way of seeing. She remembers passing a long wooden slab \u2014 \u201cI think it was an African bed,\u201d she says \u2014 and wondering aloud what anyone would ever do with it. An hour later, she saw Cave walking through the antique market with the piece tucked under his arm. When she later visited his home, the bed had become the centerpiece of his dining table. \u201cIt never would have occurred to me to see that as an art piece. The way Nick views the world is very, very different from most people.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Nick<\/p>\n

Cave stands inside an early, spectral prototype of one of his mammoths. He originally imagined them fully skinned.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of James Prinz Photography<\/p>\n

Cave is perhaps more like a bowerbird, collecting artifacts of daily life and assembling them into a world of his own making.<\/p>\n

And like the forest bird\u2019s elaborate nests, no object in Cave\u2019s \u201cMammoth\u201d is incidental. One, though, stands apart as a particular talisman: a walking cane that belonged to Cave\u2019s youngest brother, Stacy, who died at 20. In the museum gallery, \u201cit\u2019s the first object you encounter,\u201d explains Cave, who placed the cane in the show without altering it. \u201cIt was his cane. I didn\u2019t need to do anything. It was everything it needed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that his family\u2019s relics are now on display at the Smithsonian simply amazes Cave. \u201cMy grandmother\u2019s thimbles are in the Smithsonian,\u201d he smiles. \u201cThat is American history.\u201d<\/p>\n

An artist seizes the moment <\/p>\n

A week before \u201cMammoth\u201d is set to open, Cave has just returned from Washington, D.C., where he finished installing the exhibition. A handful of studio assistants work studiously at their stations nearby. Cave employs ten full-time assistants, several of whom wore the mammoths for \u201cRoam,\u201d but that number can climb as high as 30 at the height of a project.<\/p>\n

Today, the space is quieter than it has been in months. Not only does \u201cMammoth\u201d open as the Smithsonian sits at the center of the Trump administration\u2019s anti-diversity campaign, but it also appears in a moment when stories of state violence dominate the headlines. That includes the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, news that carries a grim echo of the early days of Cave\u2019s career when he created his first Soundsuit.<\/p>\n

Walking the studio floor, Cave pauses at a few mammoth heads that rest in a corner. He will eventually make a total of 13 mammoths \u2014 enough to form a herd \u2014 for a performance at the museum later this year. Looking at the pieces, Cave recalls the moment when the animal\u2019s final form first came into focus.<\/p>\n

Cave, who made the mammoths with the Chicago metal fabrication studio, Manifold, originally imagined the creatures fully skinned. But once he saw people standing beneath an early prototype, visible through the ribs, Cave changed his mind. \u201cSomething about that just revealed the state of the world today,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Dancers<\/p>\n

\u201cNick has this unique ability to see beauty and art in things that people would otherwise be so quick to discard or not value,\u201d says Michelle Boone, the president of the Poetry Foundation and former cultural commissioner.<\/p>\n

Anthony Vazquez\/Sun-Times<\/p>\n

Bringing this work to Washington now, adds Cave, only sharpens the stakes. The Smithsonian, Newman asserts, stands behind him. \u201cThe show is Nick\u2019s vision,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are presenting it. We will not change the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition may have been nearly a decade in the making, but Cave believes the work is arriving in the world exactly when it\u2019s meant to. \u201cI believe I\u2019m not ever given anything that I\u2019m not supposed to have at any given moment,\u201d reflects Cave. \u201cSo,\u201d he adds, \u201cI have a job to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elly Fishman\u2019s reporting on news and culture has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, GQ, Fast Company, Chicago, and WBEZ, among others. She is currently working on her second book, forthcoming from HarperCollins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a cerulean blue Tuesday in early January, artist Nick Cave directs an uncanny scene unfolding along the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-281230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}