Getty Presents María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold

The J. Paul Getty Museum presents María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold on view February 18 through May 4, 2025, an exhibition drawn from the artist’s family story that examines global histories of enslavement, indentured labor, motherhood, and migration. With these legacies as her backdrop, Campos-Pons foregrounds connections—between people, and between people and their environments.

Organized collaboratively by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold brings together over 50 works, including large-scale photographic grids and immersive installations, videos, paintings, and performance art documentation. While the artist’s photographs and installations are held in many collections on the East Coast and in Europe, this marks the first multimedia survey of her work since 2007, and the first opportunity on the West Coast to experience the breadth of the artist’s vision.

“Campos-Pons’s vibrant works grapple with global histories of migration, relevant both to the Getty’s commitment to the preservation of world cultures, and to efforts by the Museum and our Department of Photographs to spotlight important contemporary voices and issues,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “We are thrilled to be the exclusive West Coast venue for this exhibition of María Magdalena’s inspirational and thought-provoking work.” 

Born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1959, María Magdalena Campos-Pons draws from her personal and familial narratives, incorporating Yoruba-derived Santería symbolism to address interconnected historical and contemporary challenges. Her work reflects the experiences of her African and Chinese ancestors, as well as her life in Cuba, Italy, Boston, and Nashville, where she currently resides and serves as the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University.

The exhibition is divided into six sections, all of which highlight forms of connection. The figures, flora, and fauna that abound in Campos-Pons’s art encourage deeper appreciation of the details that surround us. She compels us to look closely, critically, to behold our environs—and each other—with an eye towards forging and repairing relationships, even in fractured times.

Among the featured works in the exhibition are Umbilical Cord (1991), a poignant artwork about the women in her family made while the artist was separated from them for more than a decade due to political tensions between the United States and Cuba, Spoken Softly with Mama (1998), an altar-like installation that honors the many generations in her family and in the African diaspora who labored as domestic workers, as well as powerful videos, performance footage, richly hued large-scale glass mobiles, intricate collages, and vibrant watercolors. Unique to the Getty’s installation of the touring exhibition is Elevata (2002), an expansive photographic grid on loan from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which will be featured in a section of the exhibition that deals with the “extreme weather” of racial oppression and climate catastrophe.

Campos-Pons is a 2023 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and in December 2024 was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by ARTnews for her efforts to show “how the past is embedded in us, the people we hold dear, and the objects we collect.”

“For decades Campos-Pons has committed herself to deploying art as a tool of healing,” notes Getty curator Mazie Harris. “As Los Angeles mourns all that has been lost in the recent wildfires and comes together to help rebuild, we hope that the exhibition can serve as a space for solace and for reflection on our relationships with nature and with each other.”

Complementing the exhibition is an audio guide that includes Campos-Pons speaking about works in the show in both English and Spanish.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition is curated by Carmen Hermo, formerly Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, now Lorraine and Alan Bressler Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Dr. Mazie Harris, Associate Curator, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum. Major support from Alicia Miñana and Rob Lovelace.

Source: Getty Communications