Image: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston has announced 'Divination: Beverly Buchanan & Dionne Lee', an upcoming exhibition that brings together the late Beverly Buchanan’s archives and new work by Dionne Lee. The show is scheduled to open in the Nina and Michael Zilkha Gallery on September 4, 2026, and remain on view through February 14, 2027. CAMH says the exhibition foregrounds the two artists’ explorations of the myths, majesty, and dispossessions embedded in the American landscape.
Organized by CAMH and curated by Senior Curator Rebecca Matalon, 'Divination' is presented as the second exhibition in a series Matalon has developed to pair artists across generations. CAMH notes that the series follows 'Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray & Jessi Reaves' in 2021, which similarly created an intergenerational dialogue. In this new installment, the museum pairs archival materials from Buchanan, including photographs, journals, writing, and ephemera, with videos, photographs, and sculptures by Lee.
The exhibition’s framing links the artists through shared questions about Blackness and land. According to CAMH, Buchanan and Lee mine racialized histories of the American landscape and its dualities as a site of sanctuary and displacement, sustenance and deprivation. The museum also describes both practices as attentive to survivalist strategies and to land as more than physical terrain, presenting it instead as an accumulation of shifting material and psychic entanglements.
Buchanan, who was born in Fuquay, North Carolina, in 1940 and died in 2015, is represented in the exhibition through archival holdings that extend beyond finished artworks. CAMH’s materials highlight her public environmental sculptures across the American Southeast, including 'Ruins and Rituals' and 'Marsh Ruins', as well as later works such as her small-scale “shack” sculptures and oil pastel flower drawings. The museum says newer scholarship has brought renewed attention to Buchanan’s contributions to land art and environmental sculpture, and that the exhibition aims to look closely at lesser-known aspects of her practice, including her use of photography to document discreet actions, major public works, and herself.
Lee, born in New York City in 1988 and based in Columbus, Ohio, works in photography, collage, and video. CAMH characterizes her practice as an exploration of power, survival, and personal history in relation to the American landscape. The museum cites her exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and other venues, along with more recent appearances in 'Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing' and 'FotoFest Biennial 2022: If I Had a Hammer'.
CAMH says the exhibition will be accompanied by a risograph-printed catalogue co-published by CAMH and F, featuring new writing by Matalon and scholar Dr. Elleza Kelley alongside photographs, historical documents, and archival materials. Support for 'Divination: Beverly Buchanan & Dionne Lee' is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, with research support from the Teiger Foundation. The museum also lists a public opening on September 3, 2026, from 7 to 9 p.m., preceded by a members’ preview from 6 to 7 p.m., and an 'In Conversation' program with Lee and Matalon on September 5 from 2 to 3 p.m.
