February 10, 2026

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Featuring works inspired by pioneering figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ida B. Wells, the exhibition examines Hunt’s sculptural engagement with history. During Hunt’s early adulthood in 1954, the Civil Rights Movement began, bringing African American leaders and activist groups to the forefront. Led by historical figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., major strides were made toward the dismantling of segregation and the adoption of racial equality. These turbulent moments deeply shaped Hunt, inspiring a lifelong practice that combined both abstraction and reflection. 

February 6, 2026

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Richard Hunt was the first artist former President Barack Obama commissioned to produce a work of art for the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago, opening summer 2026. Hunt’s sculpture, Book Bird, will be placed in the Library Reading Garden outside of the new Chicago Public Library branch on the Obama Presidential Center campus. Book Bird will depict a bird taking flight from a book to illuminate how reading and learning allows readers to enter new places and fly free.

January 15, 2026

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Many of last year’s biggest museum shows, even in institutions dedicated to contemporary art, were given over to ghosts. A quick scan of programming at institutions around the country reveals an abundance of posthumous exhibitions. 

January 9, 2026

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The Art Institute of Chicago added more than 1,000 artworks to its already-massive collection in 2025, including a Richard Hunt sculpture.

December 5, 2025

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Pressure is the largest survey to date devoted to the American sculptor Richard Hunt (1935-2023) and focuses on his ambitious, material-forward practice between 1955 and 1989. It coincides with a growing interest in the Chicago artist’s singular approach to dimensionality and transcendence; White Cube, which began representing his work a few weeks before his death, staged solo shows of his work in New York (in 2024) and London (last spring).

December 2, 2025

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The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami) will welcome guests for a rare look at works by the late Richard Hunt, a prolifically pioneering yet understudied sculptor, beginning December 2. Richard Hunt: Pressure is the first posthumous U.S. institutional survey of Hunt’s work and traces the innovation of his sculptural language and experimentations with form, scale, and materiality over more than six decades. 

December 1, 2025

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“The material basis of my sculpture is metallic opportunities. Bringing pressure to the right points, I draw the aesthetic out of the industrial process,” Richard Hunt, one of the most prolific public sculptors in the United States, wrote in a notebook decades ago. This idea of pressure was central to Hunt’s theory about sculpture. Now that will be on full display in the late artist’s first institutional survey since his death at 88 in 2023, Richard Hunt: Pressure, at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami. 

November 30, 2025

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If visitors to Art Basel Miami Beach, which runs Friday through Sunday, venture beyond the fair tents, they will find a city with a wealth of culture and history — and an area that could be described as an exclave of Cuba. Here is a selection of sights and shows.

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The ICA Miami is also presenting the first posthumous U.S. museum retrospective of the work of the American sculptor Richard Hunt ... this exhibition, covering more than five decades, showcases Hunt’s mastery of his discipline.

October 28, 2025

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The Art Institute of Chicago is pleased to announce Critical Fabulation, on view through January 4, 2026. This special collection rotation is organized by Chicago-born, internationally renowned contemporary artist Simone Leigh, in collaboration with Art Institute curators. Bringing together diverse works from the museum’s collections of African, American, and European art, Critical Fabulation explores the unexpected relationships these objects may have with one another.

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Richard Hunt's Cottonwood Hybrid (1956) is included in the exhibition.

October 26, 2025

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One of the oldest and most complete collections of African American art in the nation just got a major upgrade—and you can see it now at Detroit’s world-class art museum. The new exhibit, entitled Reimagine African American Art, is the first step in a renovation of the museum’s North Wing. ​
 

Richard Hunt’s Field Section (1972), which combines welded steel forms with automotive parts, takes center stage in the modern gallery.

October 9, 2025

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A master of metal and form, Richard Hunt transformed the landscape of American sculpture. From attending the open-casket funeral of Emmett Till in 1955 to being the first African American sculptor to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971 to becoming the most prolific public sculptor in the U.S., Hunt's creations are deeply personal and richly symbolic. Influenced by the natural world, European modernism, and the Civil Rights Movement, Hunt’s themes of transformation are ever-present. Explore these themes and more in an essay by BK Fulton, Chairman of the Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation.