The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Stella’s use of the star form emerged during his first decade in New York as he was exhibiting his groundbreaking striped and shaped paintings. It then vanished and resurfaced many decades later at a moment when he committed himself to three-dimensional abstraction. Today, the star is the lead in scores of works from small objects to towering sculptures, each parading a material resourcefulness that collapses analogue and twenty-first century fabrication techniques: RPT plastics, teak, aluminum, stainless steel, birch plywood, fiberglass, carbon fiber, and more.

The Museum’s founder Larry Aldrich showed an early interest in Stella’s work, exhibiting Tetuan (1963) one year after he founded The Aldrich in 1964. Since then, Stella’s work has been exhibited in fourteen more group exhibitions, including shows such as Cool Art (1967), The Minimal Tradition (1979), and Intermedia: Between Painting and Sculpture (1984). The present survey, however, marks the first time that The Aldrich has devoted an entire exhibition to the artist’s work.

The exhibition spans the Leir Gallery, Screening Room, Project Space, Sculpture Garden and Museum’s grounds.

Frank Stella was born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, and lives and works in New York City.

Frank Stella’s Stars, A Survey is organized by Richard Klein, Exhibitions Director, and Amy Smith-Stewart, Senior Curator, with the help of Caitlin Monachino, Curatorial Assistant and Publications Manager.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color 150-page hardbound book, featuring essays by the exhibition’s curators.