Image: Susan Silton: Diving into the Wreck, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, September 3 – November 22, 2026. Photo: Jeff McLane. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) in Barnsdall Park is showing "Susan Silton: Diving into the Wreck", the first major survey devoted to the Los Angeles-based artist. Originated by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston and curated by Andy Campbell, with organisational and curatorial support from LAMAG curator Nancy Meyer, the exhibition runs until 22 November 2026.
More than 150 works trace Silton's interdisciplinary practice, from early graphic pieces and textual interventions to photography, video, audio and participatory, multimedia installations. The gallery presents her as a central figure in West Coast conceptual, feminist and queer histories of art and design.
The title comes from Adrienne Rich's 1972 poem, in which a diver descends to examine an unnamed wreck. The exhibition uses the poem as a lens on Silton's work, organised around four themes: body and voice, perspective and vision, graphics and multiples, and the making of public memory. According to the gallery, her practice tests the limits of text, vision and participation, returning repeatedly to the same concerns.
A public project, "Civilized Voices", accompanies the show. It responds to billboards that Aline Barnsdall put up in the park in the 1940s, presenting new texts by the poets Rocío Carlos, Cathy Lin Che, Erin Marie Lynch, Lynne Thompson and Terry Wolverton on five hand-painted billboards set among the pine trees in front of the gallery.
Silton's earlier projects include "Quartet for the End of Time", a site-specific performance produced by Los Angeles Nomadic Division, the site-specific opera "A Sublime Madness in the Soul" and the "Whistling Project", involving The Crowing Hens, the women's whistling group she founded in 2009. Her recent "WE,OUR,US" is a permanent LA Metro Art commission at the Wilshire/Fairfax station. She has exhibited at venues including MOCA Los Angeles, SFMOMA and the Hammer Museum.
A catalogue of nearly 300 pages, edited by Campbell and co-published by the Blaffer Art Museum and Inventory Press, brings together contributions from writers including Amelia Jones, Dodie Bellamy and Ramón García. Remaining programmes include a catalogue release with a double reading of "WE" by Silton and Dana Johnson on 24 October, a curators' walkthrough on 7 November, a Metro Art tour at the Wilshire/Fairfax station on 8 November and a poster distribution event on 14 November.
