The Carnegie International, North America’s longest-running exhibition of international art, will reopen on Saturday, May 2, after its standard four-year hibernation.

The 59th edition coincides with its anniversary of 130 years in existence; the first international was hosted by Andrew Carnegie in 1896.

At a press event on Wednesday, Feb. 11, Eric Crosby, the Henry J. Heinz II director of Carnegie Museum of Art and vice president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, called this edition “the most collaborative and expansive to date.” The last Carnegie International opened in the fall of 2022.

“From the start, the International was conceived as a living archive,” Crosby said. “It has evolved through the work of many curators into a lens for understanding how artists respond to the specific conditions of our current moment.”

Portrait of curators Danielle A. Jackson, Ryan Inouye and Liz Park, 2023. Photo by Sean Eaton. Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art.

This year’s title, “If the word we,” comes from an essay commissioned by writer Haytham el-Wardany that contemplates the complexity of the first-person plural pronoun. According to its curators, the exhibit as a whole carries itself similarly, exploring various places, memories and lived experiences.

“[‘If the word we’ is] an invitation to consider how collective life and culture are shaped through listening, through relationships and our shared responsibility,” said Liz Park, the museum’s Richard Armstrong curator of contemporary art.

Park previously served as associate curator of the 57th Carnegie International. Also on this year’s curatorial team are Ryan Inouye, Carnegie Museum of Art’s curator of international art, and Danielle A. Jackson, a curator and artist based in New York.

The 59th Carnegie International comprises the works of 61 artists or collectives of artists, including Torkwase Dyson of New York; Liz Johnson Artur of London; Sanchayan Ghosh of Santiniketan, India; Eric Gyamfi of Accra, Ghana; and Ginger Brooks Takahashi of Pittsburgh, among many others.

Additionally, 36 projects are new commissions for the 2026 International. The 58th Carnegie International only had 22 commissioned works, according to a museum spokesperson.

Jackson said this year’s exhibition came from a relational approach to the artists. While visiting artists, the curators carried a list of “places” they wanted artists to explore but chose not to develop specific themes to give them more freedom. 

“Artists are working in all different kinds of ways, and that felt important to capture — it’s not just a painting on a wall, it’s deeper and more vast than that,” Jackson said. “There are some very good painters, but with, like, Dineo Seshee Bopape, the primary material is earth — it’s soil. What are the complications of bringing that into the gallery, and what does it mean to bring earth into a space?”

Jackson adds that there are additional works being created exclusively for the exhibition’s publication, representing an expansion of how artists often work beyond gallery space.

Sanchayan Ghosh, ‘mergEmerge,’ 2004 – 2014, A ten year long shadow casting process with the Final year students of Kala Bhavana Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan.

The International will also expand beyond the Museum of Art. Crosby said installations will also appear at four “presenting partners:” Thelma Lovette YMCA in the Hill District, The Mattress Factory, Kamin Science Center and the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

At the Children’s Museum, for example, artist Sanchayan Ghosh developed a site-specific project with precise input from local families and youth. It’ll remain on-site permanently after it closes in 2027.

A museum spokesperson told NEXTpittsburgh that the last Carnegie International drew approximately 238,000 visitors from about 40 countries.

The Carnegie International opens Saturday, May 2, and will remain through Jan. 3, 2027. Access to the exhibition is included in general admission.