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Past Exhibitions
ADMISSION Free for members, college students (with valid ID), patrons under 18, active military and veterans $7 senior citizens (65 and older), Ohio State faculty and staff (with BuckID) $9 general public
All visitors are admitted to the exhibition for free on Thursdays after 4 PM and on the first Sunday of each month; admission is also free with a ticket to any same-day Wexner Center event. The exhibition is closed on Mondays.
Please note: you will be asked to check backpacks, large purses and other large bags, and umbrellas before entering the galleries. Click here for full list of policies, including items prohibited in the galleries.
Wexner Center members always enjoy free gallery admission.
Explore ideas of place, time, language, and perception through projects by three highly influential, Ohio-born visual artists whose careers align with the 30-year life of the Wexner Center.
While Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, and Maya Lin are peers, HERE marks the first time they’ve exhibited together. Through contemplative yet distinct formal vocabularies, the works featured in HERE cultivate new connections to our surroundings. Presented in celebration of the Wexner Center’s 30th anniversary, HERE fills our galleries while activating spaces beyond, with components appearing outdoors, across Ohio State’s Columbus campus, and around the community.
Ann Hamilton (b. 1956, Lima, Ohio), a two-time Wexner Center Artist Residency Award recipient, presents when an object reaches for your hand, a collaboration unfolding over the year between the Wex and Ohio State’s Thompson Library in conjunction with the university’s 150th anniversary. Hamilton used outmoded scanners whose shallow depth of field creates ethereal images of objects rarely seen by the public from various Columbus campus special collections.
These images, together with scans of objects from personal collections, are presented in book-form stacks on tables in the center’s gallery and on the second level of Thompson's stacks tower. In the spirit of the university’s mission to make its archive available, visitors are encouraged to take a print from the stacks, either for themselves or to mail to an address of their choice at the mailing stations in either location. Two of the images (scanned from Ohio State's Museum of Biological Diversity) appear as large-scale murals, one in downtown Columbus at 82 North High Street and the other just outside the galleries on the north wall of the Mershon Auditorium. Watch for Hamilton at our Wex Wide Open and hear here events in November as she scans objects and takes portraits as part of her HERE project and her ongoing series O N E E V E R Y O N E.
Jenny Holzer (b. 1950, Gallipolis, Ohio), known for her provocative use of language, presents new installations of earlier works, including her still timely series of posters, Truisms (1977–79) and Inflammatory Essays (1979–82). Truisms comprises nearly 300 slogans that express commonly held truths, such as “ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE.” The Inflammatory Essays are composed of statements, often incendiary, influenced by diverse religious and political manifestos. Amid Truisms is a selection of marble benches recalling those seen in public memorials and parks that are engraved with poem fragments referencing the horrors of World War II. Atop the Inflammatory Essays, an LED work scrolls in blue, linking the galleries with the visual vocabulary of tickers, screens, and kiosks that Holzer has programmed throughout the city, including those on the prominent downtown corner of Broad and High.
For HERE, Maya Lin (b. 1959, Athens, Ohio) has created site-specific installations for the center’s more public lower lobby space and inside the galleries. Made with thousands of steel pins and accumulations of industrial glass beads contoured to mirror Ohio waterways, her projects consider how rivers and aquifers have both shaped and been shaped by human endeavor, asking us to question the impact of fracking and global warming. Before entering the building, visitors will encounter Lin’s Groundswell, the center's only permanent public artwork, inspired by the Native American mounds that marked the landscapes of her youth. The work was created with the support of an Artist Residency Award in 1992–93.
HERE is accompanied by a robust gallery guide featuring essays from writers, curators, and educators with Ohio State connections. Kent State University Museum Director Sarah J. Rogers, who was instrumental in bringing Groundswell to the Wex while director of exhibitions here, writes on Maya Lin. Poet, scholar, and former Ohio State Professor of English Henri Cole ruminates on the work of Jenny Holzer. Artist, writer, and Roy Lichtenstein Chair of Studio Art Carmen Winant reflects on touch and feeling in Ann Hamilton’s art.
Maya Lin Pin River—Hudson Watershed (detail), 2018 Stainless steel pins 8 ft. x 14 ft. 8 in. x 1 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery © Maya Lin Studio Photo: © Kris Graves, courtesy of Pace Gallery
Jenny Holzer From Inflammatory Essays (1979–82), 1982 Offset posters on colored paper 17 x 17" each © 1979 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Ann Hamilton when an object reaches for your hand The Ohio State University, Health Sciences Library Wexner Center for the Arts, 2019/20 Courtesy of the Ann Hamilton Studio
Installation view of Ann Hamilton's when an object reaches for your hand at the Wexner Center for the Arts
Mural of Ann Hamilton's work on the north wall of the Mershon Auditorium. Photo courtesy Orange Barrel Media
Installation view of Jenny Holzer's From Inflammatory Essays (1979–82) at the Wexner Center for the Arts
Installation view of Maya Lin's Pin River–Ohio Aquifers at the Wexner Center for the Arts
Maya Lin Pin River—Hudson Watershed (detail), 2018 Stainless steel pins 8' x 14' 8" x 1 1/2" Courtesy of Maya Lin Photo: Kris Graves, courtesy of Pace Gallery
Installation view of Maya Lin's How Does A River Overflow Its Banks? at the Wexner Center for the Arts
Maya Lin From One Into Many and Back into One (detail), 2017 Glass marbles, adhesive 13' x 28' x 1" Courtesy of Maya Lin Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, courtesy of Pace Gallery
Installation view of Jenny Holzer's works at the Wexner Center for the Arts
Jenny Holzer From Truisms (1977–79), 1977 Offset posters on paper 34 3/4 x 23" each © 1977 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Ann Hamilton when an object reaches for your hand The Ohio State University, Historic Costume & Textiles Collection Wexner Center for the Arts and Thompson Library, 2019/20 Courtesy of the Ann Hamilton Studio
Ann Hamilton when an object reaches for your hand The Ohio State University, Museum of Biological Diversity, Division of Molluscs Wexner Center for the Arts and Thompson Library, 2019/20 Courtesy of the Ann Hamilton Studio
Ann Hamilton when an object reaches for your hand The Ohio State University, Health Sciences Library, Medical Heritage Center Wexner Center for the Arts and Thompson Library, 2019/20 Courtesy of the Ann Hamilton Studio
Ann Hamilton Courtesy of the Ann Hamilton Studio Photo: Calista Lyon
Portrait of Jenny Holzer Photo: Nanda Lanfranco
Portrait of Maya Lin Photo: Jesse Frohman
Ann Hamilton Studio website
Jenny Holzer website
Maya Lin Studio
HERE: Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Maya Lin is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Senior Curator of Exhibitions Michael Goodson with Associate Curator of Exhibitions Lucy I. Zimmerman and Curatorial Assistant Kristin Helmick-Brunet.
SUPPORT FOR OFF-SITE ARTWORKS Orange Barrel Media
MAJOR SUPPORT FOR HERE The Crane Group
ASSISTING SUPPORT FOR HERE Pam and Jack Beeler Mike and Paige Crane Dave and Nancy Gill Jack and Charlotte Kessler
SUPPORT FOR ARTS ACCESS Cardinal Health Foundation Huntington Bank
GENERAL OPERATING SUPPORT Greater Columbus Arts Council Ohio Arts Council The Columbus Foundation Nationwide Foundation
HERE: Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Maya Lin