Image: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The Whitney Museum of American Art will present ‘Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes’, the first solo museum presentation devoted to the New York–based artist. The exhibition will run from September 19, 2026, through January 18, 2027, in the museum’s lobby gallery in New York.
At the centre of the presentation is ‘Stars and Stripes’, an immersive, site-specific installation that examines the development of nuclear power and the African resource extraction that has sustained it. The work takes its title from a common figure of speech used to refer to the American flag, linking the installation to Samba’s continuing examination of the symbols and forms associated with the US military-industrial complex.
Samba is a Senegalese American artist whose installations draw on the histories of modernist abstraction and minimalism. According to the Whitney, she takes seemingly neutral, non-objective forms from the global built environment and exposes the social, political and economic structures embedded within them. In the new installation, that approach is directed toward the infrastructures and histories surrounding nuclear power and resource extraction.
The presentation places Samba’s work within the Whitney’s programme of contemporary American art while also addressing systems that extend beyond the United States. The museum’s description identifies African resource extraction as a sustaining force in the development of nuclear power, making the installation’s geographical and political scope broader than its title’s reference to the American flag.
‘Coumba Samba: Stars and Stripes’ is organized by Rujeko Hockley, guest curator, with Antonia Pocock, curatorial assistant. The museum has not announced additional public programmes specific to the exhibition in the supplied material; the exhibition page lists a Member Night on October 28, 2026, from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded in New York and focused on American art, also presents the Whitney Biennial, alongside historical and contemporary exhibitions, collection displays and digital-art initiatives. Samba’s installation will remain on view at the museum through January 18, 2027.
