Image: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis has opened ‘After the Image: Adaptation in Contemporary Art,’ a Teaching Gallery installation examining how artists reuse and transform existing images, objects and narratives. On view from August 22 through December 14, 2026, the presentation considers adaptation as both a critical artistic strategy and a creative practice, tracing its uses from the 1960s to the present.
The installation brings together works by artists including Andy Warhol, Thomas Demand and Charline von Heyl. Rather than treating copying as a straightforward act of repetition, ‘After the Image’ focuses on the ways artists copy, translate, reenact and transform material that already exists. The presentation asks how those processes can alter the meaning and circulation of cultural forms.
According to the museum’s description, the works explore how adaptation can restructure the ways culture is produced and consumed. That premise places questions of authorship, translation and recontextualization at the center of the installation, while also directing attention to the movement of images between different settings and media. The presentation’s historical span connects practices associated with postwar and contemporary art without reducing adaptation to a single technique or medium.
‘After the Image’ is organized by Frauke Thielecke, a PhD student in Comparative Literature and Thought and the International Writers Track in Arts & Sciences. The installation was developed in conjunction with Thielecke’s fall 2026 course, ‘Remixed and Remade: Literature into Film.’ Its teaching-gallery setting links the museum’s exhibition activity with academic study, using works of art to examine relationships between visual practice, literary material and film adaptation.
The installation forms part of the museum’s role within Washington University in St. Louis and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Museum materials describe the institution as a center of cultural and intellectual life on campus and in St. Louis. Within that context, the Teaching Gallery presentation extends a course-based inquiry into a public exhibition format, allowing its investigation of adaptation to operate across both museum and university settings.
‘After the Image: Adaptation in Contemporary Art’ is on view in the Teaching Gallery at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, through December 14, 2026.
