Kiki Smith: Rituals

This exhibition showcases the High’s recent acquisition of a significant collection of 56 prints by artist Kiki Smith from collector Stephen Dull. The acquisition was made through a partial gift from Dull and partial purchase through the Museum’s acquisition fund. This group of prints makes the High a major national repository for Smith’s graphic work.

The collection, which includes works made between 1991 and 2004, features many of the artist’s best-known prints and represents all aspects of the extraordinary range of techniques and imagery in her graphic work. Highlights include the monumentally scaled color lithograph Born, 2002 (68⅛ x 56⅛ inches), and the mixed-technique print My Blue Lake, 1995 (43 11/16 x 54¾ inches), which combines Photogravure, à la poupée inking and lithograph. This collection will join Smith’s important installation Mother, acquired by the High in 1993.

American artist Kiki Smith (born 1954) is a feminist, politically oriented conceptual artist whose work often focuses the themes of birth, death and regeneration. Her work as a printmaker is particularly extensive and can be found in museums throughout the United States and abroad. She has been the subject of numerous exhibitions. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, has consistently exhibited and collected her prints, and in 2003 mounted Kiki Smith: Prints, Drawings & Things, a major retrospective of her printmaking.