lorna simpson: source notes — a bold evolution of memory, identity, and abstraction at the met.

Lorna Simpson: Source Notes at The Met is a stunning, transformative exploration of an artist’s journey from conceptual photography to bold, emotionally resonant painting. Open through November 2 at the Fifth Avenue location, this compelling exhibition is the first to spotlight Simpson’s significant painting practice—spanning more than 30 powerful works created over the last decade, offering a deep and nuanced insight into her evolving artistic vision.

🎨 From Photography to Painting: A Seamless Evolution

Many know Lorna Simpson for her powerful photo-text pieces from the 1980s and 90s, where she artfully interrogated race, gender, and identity. With Source Notes, she doesn’t abandon that tradition—she builds upon it. Simpson draws from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines, Associated Press archives, and Library of Congress imagery, embedding these found photographs directly into her paintings. In so doing, she blurs lines between portrait and abstraction, memory and myth lsimpsonstudio.com+12metmuseum.org+12metmuseum.org+12.

The Power of Ink, Screenprint & Blue

Her large-scale paintings—on fiberglass, wood, Claybord—layer screenprints with washes of ink and acrylic. The result? Figures that sometimes emerge from moody, inky depths, other times melt into icy abstraction. In Night Fall (2023), a luminous blue pool gives rise to a figure that glimmers like a developing photograph—haunting, momentary, suggestive metmuseum.org+4wmagazine.com+4museemagazine.com+4. Critics point to her masterful use of blue: in Night Fall, it’s both melancholic and seductive, a color laden with cultural resonance (metmuseum.org, +3wmagazine. com, +3museemagazine. com).

Memory as Material, History as Layer

In Three Figures (2014), Simpson repurposes a Civil Rights-era image—protesters being hosed—and fractures it over panels, partially concealing bodies beneath black washes. The photograph shatters into elegy. What begins as documentation evolves into reflection—memory reconfigured as abstraction metmuseum.org+8wmagazine.com+8museemagazine.com+8.

This visual archaeology is at the heart of Source Notes. Found images are excavated, obscured, and revived—not only as inspiration but as integral components of the painted surface. madisonsquarepark.org + 7metmuseum.org + 7museemagazine.com + 7.

Beyond Paint: Sculpture & Collage

While majorly painting-focused, the exhibition includes collages and a recent sculpture series, all tied by Simpson’s conceptual thread: exploring identity, memory, representation, and power metmuseum.org+9wmagazine.com+9metmuseum.org+9.

Why Source Notes Matters

• A decade-long arc in a single show – It’s the first museum presentation to trace Simpson’s painterly journey from its beginnings in 2014 to her latest meteorite-inspired pieces hypebeast.com+2amny.com+2vogue.com+2.

• Identity as abstraction – Her work shakes photographic realism, embracing uncertainty and fluidity—where figures are never fully present nor fully absent.

• Cultural excavation – Archival imagery becomes more than a motif—it's a substrate carrying the weight of Black history, material trace, and personal narrative en.wikipedia.org.

Highlights to Experience

• Night Fall (2023) – A monumental, blue-toned surface where presence and absence merge.

• Three Figures (2014) – A Civil Rights protest image dissected and reimagined.

• Special Characters & Venice Biennale works – Early milestones that hint at themes she would develop in painting wmagazine.com+1museemagazine.com+1wmagazine.com+3hypebeast.com+3museemagazine.com+3metmuseum.org+2metmuseum.org+2amny.com+2.

• Meteorite-inspired paintings – Unshown at The Met, but essential context if tracing her full creative arc metmuseum.org+2amny.com+2metmuseum.org+2.

Source Notes isn’t just an exhibition—it’s a bold statement: that Lorna Simpson is not only a master of image and text but of paint, space, history, and metaphor. Her works vibrate with what has been seen and hidden, commanding viewers to look closer, think deeper, feel more acutely. As amNewYork writes, “Her surfaces are not merely beautiful—they are dangerous. They vibrate with the tension of what has been seen, hidden, erased, and finally resurrected.”

Plan your visit:

• When: Through Nov 2

• Where: The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 913, Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Gallery metmuseum.org+11amny.com+11metmuseum.org+11

• Events: Expert talks and portrait collage workshops complement the exhibit metmuseum.org+3hypebeast.com+3metmuseum.org+3

Immerse yourself in the layered worlds Lorna builds—where every stroke is a story and every blur carries memory.