The Guggenheim Museum in New York will dedicate its entire rotunda to a single artist working in photography and video for the first time when it opens “Taryn Simon: Father Country I Do Love You” on September 18, 2026. Running through March 14, 2027, the exhibition will mark the first monographic rotunda presentation by a photography-based artist in the museum’s history as well as the largest debut of new work ever presented at the Guggenheim.
Nearly a decade in the making, “Father Country I Do Love You” (2026) is Simon’s most expansive and personal project to date. Spread across 42 individual artworks combining photography, text, video, and sculpture, it traces the real life of an unnamed federal agent whose work as a middleman involved witnessing events and collecting evidence for others to piece together. But his work rippled outward into the lives of people and nations he never knew.
The exhibition is dedicated to Simon’s father, who worked for the U.S. government in Thailand and traveled to Russia, Iran, Israel, China, Afghanistan, and Korea before embarking on a second career manufacturing and selling arcade games. Simon never learned his full story, and when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, it became impossible.
Simon has spent two decades mining bureaucratic and institutional archives in her practice. These have ranged from the CIA’s art collection to the visa paperwork behind her 2016 Park Avenue Armory performance piece “An Occupation of Loss,” which grappled with loss in a spectacular set designed by OMA. Her 2024 sculpture Kleroterion at Storm King Art Center, meanwhile, modeled on an ancient Athenian voting device, grew in part from a childhood spent around her family’s arcade machines. “Games were like oxygen—always there,” said the artist, who has described her research process as inseparable from her medium.
The works in “Father Country I Do Love You” will enter the Guggenheim’s permanent collection, which already holds three other pieces by Simon. The museum will also co-publish an accompanying artist book with Hatje Cantz. The exhibition is organized by curator Nat Trotman and was initiated by former artistic director Nancy Spector. Simon is represented by Gagosian and Almine Rech.
