The Wexner Center for the Arts Presents Midwest Debut of Hew Locke: Passages

Beginning February 14, 2026, the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University will present Hew Locke: Passages. Organized by the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), this is the most comprehensive exhibition to date on Locke. Work by the celebrated Guyanese British artist, known for his layered assemblages tackling the legacy of imperialism, will be on view at the multidisciplinary arts space through May 24, 2026.

Hew Locke: Passages spans the length of Locke’s career from the 1990s to the present and showcases the full spectrum of media employed by the artist—installation, photography, sculpture, and works on paper. The exhibition will, for the first time, offer US audiences a complete picture of Locke’s diverse practice. 

Curated by Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director of the YCBA, Hew Locke: Passages includes nearly 50 works, such as his reworked historic share certificates, direct interventions into the very documents that made modern global market capitalism; his sculptural ships, enduring symbols of connectivity and migration; and two of his Black equestrian Ambassador statues, which critique and reimagine public forms of commemoration. Series and works in the exhibition include Natives and Colonials (2005–present), Restoration (2006), The Ambassadors (2020–22), The Relic (2022), The Survivor (2022), Koh-i-noor (2005), and more.

In Locke’s words, Hew Locke: Passages is “a meeting of personal and global histories” and draws from the logic of the Baroque and its formal and conceptual complexity. In so doing, Locke’s work addresses issues of colonialism, trade routes, diasporas, the legacies of imperialism, and the constitution of hybrid identities in the Caribbean and the Guianas and their subsequent migration to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s.

Hew Locke: Passages is accompanied by a robustly illustrated publication—the first to capture the full range of Locke’s practice—coedited by Droth and Allie Biswas. It includes essays from curators and scholars examining Locke’s work in the context of colonial and postcolonial history. It will be available to purchase at the Wexner Center Store.

Hew Locke: Passages is organized by the Yale Center for British Art and curated by Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director. It is currently on view at the Yale Center for British Art. After the presentation at the Wex, it travels to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, where it will be on view June 21 through September 13, 2026.

In addition to Hew Locke: Passages, the Wexner Center’s galleries will also feature shows dedicated to work by Ximena Garrido-Lecca and Naeem Mohaiemen.