The first major museum exhibition spotlighting the artist’s singular vision, Dana Barnes: Untamed Gestures features monumental hand-formed fiber works alongside a fully immersive recreation of Barnes’s Lower East Side studio in New York City. Barnes’s sculptural landscapes composed of fibers such as merino, yak, alpaca, and silk create a compelling tactile environment in which motion and stillness, as well as strength and fragility, coexist in dynamic tension. Inspired by the slow, persistent forces of nature, Barnes twists, knots, and fuses her materials into sprawling, living forms that sag, climb, and unfurl across the gallery space. Her works pulse with a quiet vitality, inviting viewers into a dialogue between materiality and metamorphosis.
The exhibition’s immersive studio experience meticulously replicates Barnes’s original workspace at 80 Forsyth Street, a former 19th-century synagogue once home to Abstract Expressionist painter Pat Passlof. Within the space, visitors will encounter a laboratory of creativity: overflowing sacks of colorful fibers, experimental maquettes, geological fragments, and handmade tools bearing the patina of daily use. A self-directed drawing exercise will invite visitors to participate in the same spirit of wonder and material exploration that animates Barnes’s practice.
Images: Dana Barnes, Entwined, 2023 (details). Wool (merino, yak, Bluefaced Leicester, Gotland, camel, and alpaca), silk, flax, bamboo, hemp, copper, and wire. Museum of Arts and Design, New York; gift of Dale Westhoff and the artist, 2025. Photograph: Daniel Root Photography.
