‘A Poem for Deep Thinkers’ Is Rashid Johnson at His Most Vulnerable

Summary

• Over 90 works spanning Rashid Johnson’s three-decade career
• “Sanguine” installation transforms the Guggenheim’s rotunda into a living archive
• Themes of race, identity, mental health and collective expression

NYC’s Guggenheim Museum is showing Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, the artist’s most extensive solo exhibition to date. Curated by Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, the show takes over the museum’s spiraling rotunda with more than 90 works that examine race, personal history, mental health and cultural inheritance.

At the top of the ramp, a new site-specific installation titled “Sanguine” anchors the experience. Steel structures hold live plants, books by Black writers, and an upright piano intended for public performances. The installation was designed to interact with the space and its visitors, in line with architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s idea of the museum as a living structure.

Throughout the exhibition, Johnson uses materials like black soap, shea butter, ceramic and wax to reflect on Black identity and emotional experience. In his “Anxious Men and Broken Men” series, faces are scratched into tiled surfaces, repeating like a memory that will not fade. These works speak to the experience of carrying visible and invisible stress.

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers is on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City through January 18, 2026.

Guggenheim
1071 5th Ave
New York, NY 10128