At New York’s Guggenheim, A Poem for Deep Thinkers presents the most comprehensive retrospective to date of Rashid Johnson—born in 1977 in Chicago, and now one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary African American art. The materials he uses—shea butter, burnt wood, ceramic, metal, plants—are never neutral. They become narrative tools to explore urgent questions of who we are, how we care for ourselves and one another, and what role art can play in a world fractured by inequality.
The title of the exhibition comes from a line by Amiri Baraka, poet of the Black Arts Movement. But Johnson’s visual vocabulary is vast: it spans Baldwin and Basquiat, Coltrane and ’90s VHS tapes, philosophy and music, graffiti and Black thought. Curated by Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, the exhibition unfolds step by step along the museum’s spiral ramp, offering a layered portrait of his universe.
The journey begins with photographs of Chicago’s South Side, then moves through videos, wall texts, collages, and sculptures, arriving at pieces like Cosmic Slop (2008), made with black soap and wax, or the Untitled Busts in glazed stoneware—fragmented faces, marked bodies. The Anxious Men and Broken Men series, meanwhile, show repeated heads, tense, almost screaming. The viewer doesn’t just look—they are looked at.
At the end of the exhibition path is Sanguine, an installation made of glass, steel, plants, and an upright piano. Every Friday and Sunday, someone plays it—Monk, Alice Coltrane, Nina Simone. No playlist on loop: this is living music, inside the museum. Beyond the exhibition itself, A Poem for Deep Thinkers functions as a public platform. Tuesdays are for Teen Tuesday, a free workshop program for young people. On Saturdays, the Rotunda Stage comes alive with live performances. There are no thresholds, only spirals—every event, every activation feeds into the collective life of the exhibition.
