Image: Musée d'Art d'Indianapolis
Newfields is presenting 'The Source', an exhibition that gathers 22 works from the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s fashion collection and broader holdings to explore Black culture, identity and history. Open through Sunday, August 16, 2026, the exhibition considers the identities, histories and lived experiences of the African diaspora through painting, fashion and other forms of artistic expression.
The show is organized by Kyng Rhodes, an artist and independent curator based in Indianapolis. Newfields describes the project as a space for reflecting on inherited histories and contemporary realities while highlighting the creativity of Black people and Black culture. The exhibition’s framing emphasizes resilience, struggle, joyful affirmation and cultural continuity, and it invites visitors to “look closely, reflect deeply, and continue the conversation.”
According to the museum, 'The Source' includes three new acquisitions on view for the first time. The exhibition also draws from the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s world-renowned fashion collection, presenting fashion as a site of experimentation and self-expression rather than simply display. In the materials supplied by Newfields, the museum links the installation to a wider conversation about how objects can carry layered cultural meaning across generations.
The exhibition is presented at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields and is free for everyone. The source material does not indicate that the show is a traveling exhibition or that it appears at another venue, so the current presentation is limited to the Indianapolis museum site. Newfields notes that the installation is in the Bret Waller Gallery.
Visual material released with the exhibition includes Lyndy Bazile’s 'Duo Body Bather' (2024), an oil on canvas work shown in the installation view. The exhibition pages also reproduce an image credit for Jusepe de Ribera’s 'A Philosopher, probably Euclid' from the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields’ Clowes Collection, indicating the range of collection material associated with the museum’s broader context, though the source text does not identify that work as part of the exhibition checklist.
'The Source' is the latest in a run of Newfields programming that pairs major exhibitions with public events and other offerings, but the museum’s exhibition page keeps the focus on this project’s core curatorial premise: to bring together artworks that examine the African diaspora through multiple artistic forms and to foreground Black creative expression. The exhibition remains on view in Indianapolis through August 16, 2026.
