Image: The Baker Museum, Naples
The Baker Museum in Naples, Florida, will present ‘Linling Lu: Fugue in 3 Voices’, an installation of new circular paintings by Baltimore- and Washington, DC-based artist Linling Lu. The exhibition will be on view in the museum’s Springborn Gallery from July 11, 2026, through January 3, 2027, linking the visual-arts programme of Artis—Naples with its music offerings.
Lu is known for paintings that translate musical structures into concentric rings of colour. Her hard-edge compositions are made by hand, with bands of varying widths arranged to evoke the movement and resonance of sound. The works can reach up to nine feet in diameter, and their circular forms and tightly controlled colour sequences are intended to suggest vibration and musical contemplation.
For ‘Fugue in 3 Voices’, Lu has created new pieces inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonín Dvořák and Igor Stravinsky. The exhibition’s title refers to the musical form in which separate voices are interwoven, an idea the museum says is reflected in the installation’s combination of the three composers’ influences. The works respond to compositions featured in the Naples Philharmonic’s Masterworks series during the 2025–26 and 2026–27 seasons.
The exhibition extends a practice grounded in Lu’s study of music. A classically trained pianist, she continues to practise piano in her studio between painting sessions. Her work transforms musical information into visual form, ranging from the structure of an entire composition to a small group of notes within a measure. The result is a body of paintings that asks viewers to consider musical organisation through colour, scale and rhythm rather than sound alone.
Artis—Naples operates The Baker Museum alongside its music and performance programmes, including the Naples Philharmonic. The museum’s exhibition schedule includes presentations drawn from its permanent collection as well as temporary exhibitions and installations. During the 2026–27 season, its programme also includes ‘The Surrealist International: Fifty Years of Dreams’, drawn from the collection of Tate, and ‘Baron Wolman: Capturing the Sound of an Era’, focused on the photographer and former first chief photographer of Rolling Stone.
‘Linling Lu: Fugue in 3 Voices’ is organised by Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, and curated by Courtney McNeil, the museum’s director and chief curator. Lu will appear at the museum for the artist talk ‘The Sound of Color’ on Friday, December 11, at 10am, alongside Alexander Shelley, artistic and music director, and McNeil. The Baker Museum is located at 5833 Pelican Bay Boulevard in Naples; its listed regular hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 4pm, and Sunday, noon to 4pm.
