Kerry James Marshall, The Histories*

The Paris Museum of Modern Art presents, from 18 September 2026 to 24 January 2027, the first exhibition in France devoted to the American artist Kerry James Marshall (born 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, United States).

Organized by the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Kerry James Marshall: The Histories* exhibition presents seventy works, including eight newly produced paintings created especially for the exhibition.

Considered one of the most influential contemporary painters, Kerry James Marshall is known for his monumental compositions that give central prominence to Black figures, often elevating the banal to epic status. By placing these figures within the archetypes of art history, the artist invites the viewer to gauge the undeniable power of their presence. Kerry James Marshall addresses themes such as the forced crossing of Africans enslaved and transported to the Americas, the legacy of Black American mobilizations such as the civil rights and Black Power movements, while never directly depicting violence and alienation. His work draws inspiration as much from the canon established by Western art history as from other forms of visual expression drawn from popular culture, notably nineteenth-century French painting, contemporary culture, Afrofuturism, comics, and science fiction.

Designed with the artist's support, the exhibition aims to trace more than four decades of his career. It features numerous bodies of work that unfold primarily in the field of painting but also across prints, drawings and a sculpture, drawn from museums and private collections in North America and Europe.

The Paris Museum of Modern Art highlights Kerry James Marshall’s work, continuing a series of pioneering monographic exhibitions in France devoted to American Black artists, notably Kara Walker (2007) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (2010). Kerry James Marshall works in series and cycles, as evidenced by the exhibition's chronological and thematic organization, which presents eleven groups of works created between 1980 and today.

Exhibition route

The exhibition opens with the artist’s early mature works from the 1980s, such as Invisible Man (1986), inspired by Ralph Ellison’s novel of the same name (1952). This section highlights Kerry James Marshall’s interest in depicting Black figures, while raising questions about their representation in art history and about the people and elements that have been excluded. The artist’s radical approach, which uses a range of black pigments mixed with other colors, influences how viewers perceive his figures.

The second room presents large canvases addressing the history of the “Middle Passage,” an expression referring to the Atlantic crossing of Africans captured to be sold as slaves.

The exhibition continues with the presentation of monumental works illustrating scenes of contemporary life, with settings such as hairdressing and beauty salons, parks and outdoor spaces. By referencing artists such as Édouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Georges Seurat and other painters of modern life, Marshall corrects the absence of large-scale images representing the daily life of Black people in Western art history.

The Souvenirs series (1997–1998) takes as its starting point the American civil rights movement. The paintings of the Vignette series (2003–2014) depict Black couples in a style that draws on both Rococo painting and the aesthetics of American greeting cards.

One of the major works of the exhibition is Wake, a cumulative sculpture created in 2003 and adorned with new medallions each time it is exhibited.

A section brings together imagined portraits of Black historical figures such as Scipio Moorhead and Harriet Tubman, and asks how historical portraits can be created in the absence of archives and prior representations of the people concerned.

The final galleries trace the evolution of Kerry James Marshall’s artistic approach, revisiting the icons of Western classical painting. The works from 2000–2010 specifically emphasize Marshall’s long-standing interest in the artistic disciplines taught within institutions. One of the highlights is The Academy (2012), in which a male model from a life-drawing class raises a fist in a Black Power salute.

The exhibition closes with a series of new works. These eight paintings explore little-known episodes in African history. Several of them focus on the Transatlantic slave trade and highlight the role played by certain Africans in selling enslaved people to European merchants.

Exhibition Catalogue

The exhibition catalogue, published in French by Paris Musées and in English by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, is the most comprehensive publication to date on the artist, celebrating nearly half a century of his work. The Paris Musées edition is also the first French-language publication devoted to him. It includes illustrations of all the works in the exhibition and gathers an essay by Mark Godfrey, accompanied by six essays by Aria Dean, Darby English, Madeleine Grynsztejn, Cathérine Hug, Nikita Sena Quarshie and Rebecca Zorach, as well as an extensive interview between Kerry James Marshall and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh.

Exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris / Paris Musées and Kunsthaus Zürich. The exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London ran from 20 September 2025 to 18 January 2026 and the exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich took place from 27 February to 16 August 2026.

*The Narratives

With the support of:

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