“lorna simpson: source notes” – artist-led PHA patrons tour

Installation view of Lorna Simpson: Source Notes, on view May 19–November 2, 2025 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Eileen Travell, Courtesy of The Met

Lorna Simpson will guide PHA Patrons through the exhibition of her work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Focusing on a new development of her work over the last decade, Lorna Simpson: Source Notes features examples from her acclaimed Venice Biennale debut in 2015 and her celebrated series Special Characters, along with a recent sculpture and related collages.

The tour will conclude with a visit to The Met Museum’s Drawings and Prints department for a closer look at the museum’s collections in the archive.

Wednesday, October 22
3:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Lorna Simpson: Source Notes
Artist-Led PHA Patrons Tour

This event is open to PHA Patrons at all levels.

This presentation of work by New York–based artist Lorna Simpson is the first exhibition to consider the entirety of her painting practice to date. Simpson came to prominence in the early 1990s with her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. Since then, she has produced works in multiple media that continue to probe the nature of images and how they construct meaning. Lorna Simpson: Source Notes focuses on a significant new development in her work of the last 10 years: paintings that advance her incisive explorations of gender, race, identity, representation, and history. Through more than 30 works, this focused exhibition presents a selection of Simpson’s major paintings, including examples from her acclaimed Venice Biennale debut in 2015 and her celebrated series Special Characters, along with a recent sculpture and related collages.

Throughout Simpson’s expansive practice, she has often sourced imagery and drawn inspiration from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines (icons of culture in contemporary America), as well as the archives of the Associated Press and Library of Congress. Simpson incorporates her findings into screen-printed collages with washes of ink and acrylic on fiberglass, wood, or Claybord. These works dynamically collide figuration and abstraction with bodies that emerge and disappear, peering from inky surfaces or dissolving into landscapes of melting ice. They use found images—the artist’s “source notes”—to generate visual power, exemplifying Simpson’s skillful blurring of genres.

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This event is part of the PHA Patrons program, which offers engaging experiences from studio visits, artist talks, receptions and dinners, to VIP tours. Through these quarterly events, Patrons have meaningful interaction with many of our collaborating creatives while providing crucial support for PHA’s mission.

For more information, please email Megan Skidmore at development@powerhousearts.org