Image: Nasher Museum of Art, London
‘Explosion! Bay Area Punk’ is on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, bringing together art, music and publications associated with the Northern California punk scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The exhibition runs from August 8, 2026, through January 3, 2027, in the museum’s Incubator Gallery.
The presentation focuses on a period when punk’s confrontational energy extended beyond music into visual art, printmaking, photography and informal exhibition-making. The museum describes the movement as part of an international phenomenon shaped by irreverent, anti-institutional, anti-capitalist and anarchic messages. In Northern California, the scene intensified after the British band the Sex Pistols played in San Francisco in 1978.
The exhibition traces the close relationship between artists and musicians in the Bay Area. Artists formed bands, organized pop-up art shows and contributed to a network of venues, record labels and radio broadcasts. The works on view are intended to show that punk functioned not only as an aesthetic but also as an enduring attitude, one that continues to inform artistic approaches.
Among the artists featured are Eve Aschheim, Bruce Conner, J.C. Garrett, Bruce Glück, Randy Hussong and Selina Wintersteen. Conner’s photographs document the Mabuhay Gardens, a San Francisco venue described by the museum as ground zero for punk and new wave music. His works include ‘FRANKIE FIX: CRIME from MABUHAY GARDENS PUNK PHOTOS’ and ‘WOMEN’S ROOM AT THE MABUHAY from MABUHAY GARDENS PUNK PHOTOS’, both made in 1978.
The exhibition also includes Aschheim’s ‘Explosion’ (1984), an oil and spray-paint painting held in the Nasher Museum’s collection, as well as Hussong’s prints ‘Bi-Partisan Person’ (1983) and ‘Plate as Target II’ (1977). Glück is represented by the etching ‘Eat the Dead: Fight Visual Numbness’ (1980) and the pen, ink and watercolor work ‘High Energy Physics As Art’ (1977). Wintersteen’s ‘Untitled’ (1984) adds a painting-based perspective to the exhibition’s account of the scene.
‘Explosion! Bay Area Punk’ is organized by Marshall N. Price, the Nasher’s chief curator and Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The exhibition is supported by the Janine & J. Tomilson Hill Family Fund, the J. Horst & Ruth Mary Meyer Fund for the Nasher Museum, the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family Fund for Exhibitions, and the John & Anita Schwarz Family Endowment. It remains on view in Durham through January 3, 2027.
