Selected Exhibitions
2024
The Lay of the Land
Tinworks Art, Bozeman, MT
June 15 — October 19, 2024
Tinworks Art opens the 2024 season by featuring a major new ecological artwork by Agnes Denes and work by five artists inspired by the land of the American West: James Castle, Layli Long Soldier, Lucy Raven, Stephen Shore, and Robbie Wing.
With an intergenerational mix of established and emerging artists, iconic work, and newly commissioned installations, The Lay of the Land explores how land in the West is represented. The artworks included connection to land and place through their physical materiality—wheat, sediment, soot, clay, the sound of passing trains—and subject matter—the natural or industrial forces that have shaped the land of the West and depictions of western places shaped by memory or technology.
James Castle: Foundations
James Castle House, Boise, ID
May 9, 2024 — February 1, 2025
Exploring the styles and materials Castle worked with most often, including soot and spit, color, books, pattern works, transcriptions, collages, text works, and constructions. From his well-known soot and spit drawings to his enigmatic constructed works, we find evidence of daily practice, daily life, techniques and habits, preferences, and influences.
2023
Interlude: A Five-Year Residency Retrospective
James Castle House, Boise, ID
August 17, 2023 – April 27, 2024
For the first time in its five-year history, the James Castle House’s newest exhibition – Interlude: A Five-Year Residency Retrospective – pairs contemporary artworks by James Castle House residents with original works by James Castle.
Developed in collaboration with guest curator Andrea Merrell, Collection Manager at the James Castle Collection and Archive, Interlude invites viewers to explore this dialogue shared between James Castle and contemporary artists.
In partnership with James Castle Collection and Archive
The Private Universe of James Castle: Drawings from the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and James Castle Collection and Archive
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA
June 25 – September 17, 2023
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is the presentation’s sole venue and represents the first exhibition of Castle’s works in Southern California. The show highlights the artist’s remarkable technical skills and attempts to foster a better understanding of his evocative and unconventional images, particularly his landscapes and architectural interior scenes.
James Castle: Thresholds
Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT
April 2, 2023–May 28, 2023
This exhibition features more than fifty works, including rarely-seen books and constructions drawn from the collection of the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation in Mount Kisco, New York, and the James Castle Collection and Archive in Boise, Idaho. It focuses on the artist’s interest in thresholds—the boundaries and in-between spaces that predominate in his work.
2022
We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
July 1, 2022 – March 26, 2023
We Are Made of Stories traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how their creativity and bold self-definition became significant forces in American art despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles.
Stitched
Ordovas Gallery, London, UK
June 7 – July 30, 2022
Stitched explores the ambitious, versatile, and radical use of stitches in works by twentieth-century and contemporary artists.
Ways of Knowing
James Castle House, Boise, Idaho
February 3 – December 31, 2022
Guest curator Andrea Merrell offers a glimpse of the vast range of works Castle created in his lifetime. Through thoughtful curation, she shares her understanding of James Castle’s visual vocabulary, which he developed by investigating the world with his many ways of knowing.
James Castle
David Zwirner, New York, NY
January 13 – February 12, 2022
David Zwirner will present an exhibition of works by James Castle (1899–1977). Organized in
collaboration with the James Castle Collection and Archive, the exhibition offers an extensive look at
Castle’s captivating visual world, which documents his home and surroundings in and around Boise and
central Idaho through vivid drawings and assemblages.
David Zwirner exhibition website
David Zwirner online exhibition
2020 – 2021
The Window: A Journey of Art and Architecture through Windows
Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art (MIMOCA), Marugame, Japan
October 13, 2020 – January 11, 2021
Four works by James Castle are included in this exhibition, organized jointly with the Window Research Institute, which advocates “windowology” and focuses on windows from various viewpoints. In addition to Henri Matisse’s paintings and cutting-edge contemporary art, the contents will include non-art topics such as the global history of windows. The galleries will showcase cross-genre exhibits, including scenes of windows loved and painted by artists and useful tips about windows.
2019
The Window: A Journey of Art and Architecture through Windows
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
November 1, 2019 – February 2, 2020
Four works by James Castle are included in this exhibition, organized jointly with the Window Research Institute, which advocates “windowology” and focuses on windows from various viewpoints. In addition to Henri Matisse’s paintings and cutting-edge contemporary art, the contents will include non-art topics such as the global history of windows. The galleries will showcase cross-genre exhibits, including scenes of windows loved and painted by artists and useful tips about windows.
Sequences IX
Reykjavík, Iceland
October 11 — October 20, 2019
Drawings by James Castle are featured in Sequences IX, an artist-run biennial held in Reykjavík, Iceland, from October 11 to 20, 2019. Sequences is an independent international art festival that focuses on time-based art.
Sequences IX
Kling & Bang exhibition website
The Art of Collage
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
June 1 — September 2, 2019
From Joseph Cornell’s curious found-object boxes to Jess’s fantastical “paste-ups,” discover the seemingly limitless ways modern and contemporary artists have mixed materials to create something entirely new and surprising. This exhibition explores assemblage and collage’s rich breadth and history and features many self-taught artists who reinvented their chosen mediums.
Viewshed: Impressions of Place
The James Castle House, Boise ID
May 15 — August 31, 2019
In partnership with the James Castle Collection and Archive, the James Castle House presents an exhibition of drawings by James Castle. This exhibition highlights drawings of the shed, his primary living space and studio for over 30 years, and its relationship to the surrounding landscape and buildings.
Louder than Words
Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA
February 2 — May 5, 2019
James Castle was featured in the exhibition Louder than Words at the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. Artists include Terry Adkins, John Cage, Nick Cave, Christine Sun Kim, and Yoko Ono. This exhibition highlighted artists using non-linguistic sounds, symbols and gestures to communicate. Curator Teresa Bramlette Reeves suggested that some artists “…who work within the imposed condition of deafness reveal the gaps inherent in communication — what is missing, misunderstood, intentionally ignored, or entirely invented.”
2018
The James Castle Primer (An exhibition)
James Castle Collection and Archive, Boise, ID
Nov 15, 2018 — Feb 28, 2019
This exhibition included 62 artworks by American artist James Castle. With a few exceptions, all work in the exhibition is also featured in the recently published book, “The James Castle Primer”.
Outliers and American Vanguard Art
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
January 28 — May 13, 2018
Organized by National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. this exhibition explored key moments in American art history when avant-garde artists and outliers intersected, and how their interchanges ushered in new paradigms based on inclusion, integration, and assimilation. The first section of the exhibition illustrates how the early history of American modernism, especially the first years of the Museum of Modern Art, championed folk art and self-taught artists before the ascendance of abstract expressionism.
Along with the work of James Castle, this exhibition featured over 250 works in a range of media by more than 80 self-taught and trained artists, such as Henry Darger, William Edmondson, Lonnie Holley, Greer Lankton, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Matt Mullican, Horace Pippin, Martín Ramírez, Betye Saar, Judith Scott, Charles Sheeler, Cindy Sherman, Bill Traylor, and Kara Walker. Photo courtesy of The National Gallery of Art, Rob Shelly.
National Gallery of Art exhibition website
Other venues:
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 24 — September 30, 2018
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 18, 2018 — March 18, 2019
James Castle: People, Places and Things
New York Studio School, New York, NY
January 29 — March 4, 2018
Curated by Karen Wilkin, this exhibition featured over 50 works and ephemera by James Castle, including rarely seen source material, borrowed from the James Castle Collection and Archive LP and The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation Inc.
2017
Where We Are: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection 1900–1960
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
April 28, 2017 — Jun 2, 2019
Focusing on works made from 1900 to 1960, Where We Are traces how artists have approached the relationships, institutions, and activities that shape our lives. Drawn entirely from the Whitney’s holdings, the exhibition was organized around five themes: family and community, work, home, the spiritual, and the nation.
James Castle Landscapes
Lawrence Markey Gallery, San Antonio, TX
October — December 2016
Landscape was one such theme frequently explored by James Castle. This exhibition brings together a carefully chosen selection of landscape drawings that demonstrate the nuance and grace of Castle’s strongest work. In Castle’s landscapes a fluid relationship between observation and invention is evident. Scale, composition, and perspective play very intentional roles, quite far from naive or arbitrary. James Castle’s formidable drawing talent comes through in scenes that are familiar yet otherworldly, beautiful and peculiar, discernibly handmade yet sophisticated.
James Castle: The Experience of Every Day
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN
May 2 — August 21, 2016
This exhibition, organized by Mia’s Department of Prints and Drawings, explores Castle’s extensive and highly inventive body of work: drawings, handmade books, collages, and three-dimensional constructions produced from found materials (scrap cardboard, paper, string, ribbon, advertising, food labels, and printed text) and invented media, tools, and techniques. Ingenious and engagingly improvisational, his work serves as a visual chronicle of his day-to-day experiences, an intimate record of life on his family’s farm, and expression of his dreams, memories, and fantasies.
Architecture of Life
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA
January 31 — May 29, 2019
Architecture of Life, the inaugural exhibition in BAMPFA’s landmark new building, explored the ways that architecture—as concept, metaphor, and practice—illuminates various aspects of life experience: the nature of the self and psyche, the fundamental structures of reality, and the power of the imagination to reshape our world. Occupying every gallery in the new building, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibition comprises over two hundred works of art in a wide range of media, as well as scientific illustrations and architectural drawings and models, made over the past two thousand years. Boundary-breaking, innovative, and radically interdisciplinary, the exhibition presents visually exquisite, rarely seen works in ways that suggest new connections and meanings.
2015
James Castle: Ask and Learn
Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson, WY
July 2 — August 16, 2015
In this exhibition one is invited to ask questions about James Castle and his work with the same natural curiosity that the artist asked of himself. The more you look at the works in the show, the more you ask questions. Why did Castle do this? Why did Castle choose this text? The more you observe, the more Castle’s genius emerges. Castle’s work elevates the mundane and every day into the realm of art.
2014
Untitled: The Art of James Castle
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
September 26, 2014 — February 1, 2015
In 2013 the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired 54 pieces by James Castle (1899-1977). With this acquisition, the museum now holds one of the largest public collections of Castle’s work. Untitled: The Art of James Castle features this representative selection of the artist’s immense oeuvre, including drawings, handmade books, texts, and constructions.
This exhibition seeks to move beyond such biography, to appreciate the remarkable quality of Castle’s vision, and to question how the works themselves can elucidate the world of one of the most enigmatic American artists of the twentieth century.
Nicholas R. Bell, the Fleur and Charles Bresler Senior Curator of American Craft and Decorative Art, organized the exhibition.
2013
Constructing James Castle
Urban Arts Space, Columbus, OH
January 8 — February 23, 2013
Curated by Brenda Brueggemann, Professor at The Ohio State University in English and Disability Studies, his exhibition focused mostly on works that demonstrated the impact of Castle’s 5-year education with the Gooding (Idaho State) School for the Deaf and Blind between 1910–1915. Though during his five years at the Gooding School he was declared “uneducable” and “illiterate,” he communicated the impact of his time there through his diverse artwork that was based, in part, on the trades, training, and experiences he gained from the Gooding School. His self-taught skill is a testament not only to his intelligence and ability, but also his artistry.
2011
James Castle, Show and Store
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
May 18 — September 5, 2011
This was the first exhibition in Spain about the American artist James Castle, an “outsider” of the institutional circuit until not long ago. A selection of 500 of his works gives a general panoramic of his trajectory and conceptually redefines his contribution to the world of art by displaying his perseverance to cherish, protect, handle and install his original creations. His prolific oeuvre, result of a fruitful artistic activity during almost seventy years, formulated its own imaginary inspired in the popular culture that surrounded him.
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia exhibition website
Tour of the exhibition narrated by Lynne Cooke
2008
James Castle: A Retrospective
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA
October 14, 2008 — January 4, 2009
Curated by Ann Percy, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, James Castle: A Retrospective marked the first comprehensive museum exhibition of the work of James Castle. This exhibition consisted of some 300 drawings, color wash pieces, handmade books, assemblages, and text works selected from museums and private collections, including many from the holdings in Castle’s estate.