MoMA Opens First Major Brancusi Retrospective in Thirty-One Years
The Museum of Modern Art in New York opened 'Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio' on 25 October 2026, a landmark exhibition of 210 objects from the Atelier Brancusi — made possible because the Atelier is closed while the adjacent Centre Pompidou in Paris undergoes extensive renovation.
On 25 October 2026, MoMA opened 'Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio' across its entire sixth floor, presenting 210 objects from the Atelier Brancusi — including sculptures, hand-carved furniture, pedestals, photographs, and fabrication tools — part of the French national art collection, made available because the Atelier is closed while the Centre Pompidou undergoes extensive renovation. It is the first major museum retrospective of Constantin Brancusi's work since 1995. Guest curator Anne Umland, a veteran MoMA curator who has organized deep-dive shows on artists from Picasso and Dalí to Meret Oppenheim and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, has shaped a presentation that includes a central 'ghost studio' — an evocation of Brancusi's final studio layout using translucent fabric, colored flooring, and filmed projections — reflecting his conviction that pedestals were 'a live, active part of the sculpture' and that the environment surrounding a work was inseparable from the work itself. Born in Romania in 1876, Brancusi moved to Paris in 1904 and briefly worked with Auguste Rodin before forging his own revolutionary approach, distilling forms to their geometric and organic essence. The exhibition runs through 27 February 2027.
