The Momentary Announces 2021 Winter/Spring Visual Arts Season

Bentonville, Ark. – The Momentary announces the 2021 winter/spring exhibition schedule which includes site-responsive installations in Sarah Cain: In Nature, a reimagination of safe destinations for the Black American traveler during the mid-twentieth century in Derrick Adams: Sanctuary, and an exploration of memory, ruin, progress, and globalism in Diana Al-Hadid: Ash in the Trade Winds. The contemporary art space also announces Olalekan Jeyifous as the next artist selected for the Momentary Flag Project. 

“We are thrilled that this next season will allow visitors to engage with our galleries in a new way, taking a deep dive into the work and practice of three contemporary artists, each with a solo exhibition on view simultaneously,” said Lauren Haynes, director of artist initiatives and curator, contemporary art at the Momentary and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. “We encourage visitors to immerse themselves in each space and experience the role contemporary art has in our everyday life.”

Sarah Cain: In Nature

February 13 — May 30, 2021

Los Angeles-based artist Sarah Cain will create a site-responsive exhibition for the Momentary. Sarah Cain: In Nature will include colorful abstract works on canvas, functional floor paintings, sculpture, and a stained-glass window. Known for her brightly colored installations that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, Cain’s work moves over and off the canvas, responding to architecture at large.

When Cain visited Bentonville, she was inspired by the raw state of the former factory building that the Momentary occupies and the overall integration of the natural setting of the gallery experience. She decided to create an exhibition that would allow visitors to discover the space anew. Sarah Cain: In Nature, featuring a combination of existing and new artworks, focuses on formal observations from nature and the search for new possibilities during a worldwide moment of sheltering in place and limited mobility.

Cain’s work has been featured in several museums throughout the United States, and her work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, Aspen Art Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Cain’s work resides in the permanent collections of various museums, including the Perez Art Museum Miami, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Sarah Cain’s exhibition will be on view in the Lobby Gallery at the Momentary.

Derrick Adams: Sanctuary 

February 20 — June 6, 2021

From 1936 to 1967, during the Jim Crow era, Black American road-trippers referenced a guidebook, The Negro Motorist Green Book, also known as The Green Book, to identify businesses, including hotels, restaurants, state parks, beauty parlors, and nightclubs, that were nondiscriminatory and welcoming. In Derrick Adams: Sanctuary, this reference material serves as inspiration to reimagine safe destinations for the Black American traveler in an exhibition featuring mixed-media collage and sculpture.

In his continued exploration of Black refuge and leisure, and during a time when uneven law enforcement continues to negatively shape the experiences of Black Americans, Adams also offers a space to reflect on the importance, and at times political act, of having the freedom to go wherever you want.

Adams is a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2019), a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2018), a Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2016), and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2009). His work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Derrick Adams: Sanctuary will be on view in Gallery 1 and Gallery 3 at the Momentary.

Derrick Adams: Sanctuary is organized by Dexter Wimberly and Derrick Adams Studio. Derrick Adams: Sanctuary was originally presented at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, from January 25 to August 5, 2018, and was curated with support from MAD’s Curator of Collections Samantha De Tillio.

Diana Al-Hadid: Ash in the Trade Winds 

February 27 — June 13, 2021

The Momentary presents a solo exhibition of works by Diana Al-Hadid who utilizes a wide range of materials that explore notions of memory, ruin, progress, and globalism. Diana Al-Hadid: Ash in the Trade Winds will feature several wall panels and sculptures that were created between 2018 and 2020, highlighting recent developments in Al-Hadid’s signature process of layering pigments on to classical and contemporary materials, including bronze, plaster, fiberglass, and polymer gypsum.

The works in this exhibition portray reimagined elements found within the story of Gradiva, a fictitious female character from Wilhelm Jensen’s novella of the same name. Drawing inspiration from literature, architecture, and art history, Al-Hadid’s work dissolves female forms and landscapes into approximations of their original source. Together, these captivating works encourage slow looking and invite viewers to create their own visual histories.

Diana Al-Hadid was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1981 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is included in collections such as the San Jose Museum of Art, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Weatherspoon Art Museum.

Diana Al-Hadid: Ash in the Trade Winds will be on view in Gallery 2 at the Momentary.

The Momentary Flag Project: Olalekan Jeyifous

January 15 — April 18, 2021

In the spirit of our adaptive reuse architecture, the Momentary Flag Project offers a rotating series of artist-designed flags that are raised on the factory’s historic flag pole, located on E Street. The series asks artists to explore the symbolic resonance of flags and consider how they shape our understanding of place and identity.

Brooklyn-based artist and designer Olalekan Jeyifous, whose work often reimagines social spaces around issues that explore the relationship between architecture, community, and the environment, will present the first flag of 2021. Jeyifous received a BArch from Cornell University and is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited at venues such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA, the Vitra Design Museum, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

In addition to his extensive exhibition history, Jeyifous has spent over a decade creating large-scale artwork for a variety of public spaces. He created award-winning installations for Starbucks located in the Barclays Arena in Brooklyn and its Flagship store located in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. Most recently, he has completed commissions for the Durham SmART Vision Plan, a 50ft-tall sculpture for the 2017 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and four large sculptures for Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

A full list of Visual Arts Projects at the Momentary can be viewed online here.

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About the Momentary

The Momentary is a new contemporary art space in downtown Bentonville, Arkansas, for visual, performing, and culinary arts. The mission of the Momentary is to champion contemporary art’s role in everyday life and explore the unfolding story of contemporary American arts in an international context by actively commissioning and exhibiting outstanding works that explore new ideas and inspire action. The Momentary was founded by the Walton family, based on the vision of Tom, Olivia, and Steuart Walton. The Walton Family Foundation is supporting this project as a way to enhance the quality of life in Northwest Arkansas. The Momentary is a satellite to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by Alice Walton. The Momentary welcomes all with free general admission. Additional offerings include an artist-in-residence program, culinary experiences including an Onyx Coffee Lab, indoor and outdoor gathering spaces, an outdoor festival space, and a gift store. For more information, visit theMomentary.org. The Momentary is located at 507 SE E Street, Bentonville, Arkansas 72712. The Momentary’s Founding Funders are Walton Family Foundation, Walmart, RØDE Microphones, The Coca-Cola Company, Tyson Family Foundation, and Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation.