Image: Menil Collection, The Menil Collection ; sarah hobson 1 ; sarah hobson 1 ; sarah hobson 1
Artist Jitish Kallat will discuss his new site-specific wall drawing at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston on Thursday, September 10, in a public talk accompanying the project’s opening. The event, scheduled for 7–8 p.m., will be followed by a public reception.
Kallat will speak with Edouard Kopp, the Menil Drawing Institute’s John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator. According to the Menil, the conversation will address the wall drawing’s concept and technology, as well as its connections to the Cold War and Project A119. The program will take place at the Menil Drawing Institute, 1412 W. Main Street, and is free and open to the public.
The commission forms part of ‘Wall Drawing Series: Jitish Kallat,’ on view at the institute from September 10, 2026, through August 8, 2027. The Menil Collection commissioned Kallat to produce the work for the building’s entry space. The presentation is curated by Kopp.
The ‘Wall Drawing Series’ began in 2018 as part of the Menil Drawing Institute’s effort to pursue new approaches to the form and language of drawing. Previous participants named by the museum include Marc Bauer, Mel Bochner, Roni Horn, Marcia Kure, Gladys Nilsson, Ronny Quevedo and Jorinde Voigt. Kallat’s project continues the series’ focus on drawing as a form that can be developed directly in architectural space.
Born in Mumbai, where he continues to live and work, Kallat is described by the Menil as a leading figure in contemporary Indian art. Over the past three decades, his practice has encompassed drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and time-based media. The museum identifies a recurring interest in shifting focal lengths across space and time—from the intimate to the cosmic, and from the present to the historic—while drawing on references to history, science, philosophy and cosmic time.
Kallat has presented solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. His work has also been shown at Tate Modern in London, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin and Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, as well as at biennales in Venice, Gwangju, Havana, Bangkok, Curitiba and Kyiv. He served as curator and artistic director of the 2014 Kochi-Muziris Biennale and is currently president of the biennale.
The Menil has also scheduled a members-only noontime talk on the project with Kopp for Friday, October 23, from 12–12:30 p.m. The Menil Drawing Institute is closed through September 9, 2026, ahead of the exhibition’s opening.
