A Poem for Deep Thinkers July 27, 2025

 Truth be told, I am not a fan of the Guggenheim Museum. I find the building design a distraction to viewing the art. That said, I do occasionally visit if there is a show I am interested in seeing like the Jenny Holzer exhibit last year. Add to that short list the present exhibit called ‘Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers’ which is there thru January 2026. On view are almost 90 works—from black-soap paintings and spray-painted text works to large-scale sculptures, film, and video. They fill the museum’s rotunda, including Sanguine, a monumental site-specific work on the building’s top ramp with an embedded piano for musical performances. Additionally, a dynamic program of events, developed in collaboration with community partners across New York City, activate a sculptural stage on the rotunda floor. If you plan your visit you can easily experience one of these special performances. For nearly 30 years, artist Rashid Johnson has cultivated a diverse body of work that draws upon an array of disciplines such as history, philosophy, literature, and music. This major solo exhibition highlights Johnson’s role as a scholar of art history, a mediator of Black popular culture, and as a creative force in contemporary art. We thoroughly enjoyed this amazingly multi-talented artist.