Carol Bove‘s rotunda-filling Guggenheim Museum show in New York may be billed as a retrospective, but it’s not a solo show in the traditional sense: it also features works by a range of artists interspersed throughout. In fact, the crown jewel of the show is not a sculpture by Bove but a mural by Joan Miró that’s always on hand at the Guggenheim—even though the general public typically can’t see it.
Composed of 190 ceramic tiles, the work is a 19-foot-long mural titled Alicia (1965–67) that Miró produced in collaboration with the ceramicist Josep Llorens Artigas. It’s now viewable near the ramp leading up to the second level for the first time in more than 20 years.
According to a text within the show, the mural was commissioned in 1963 by Harry F. Guggenheim, who was at the time the president of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation to pay homage to Alicia Patterson, the Newsday editor who was married to Guggenheim and died that same year. Most of the time, the mural is hidden behind a false wall.
When seen in full, the mural appears to contain the name “Alice,” and not “Alicia,” with the letters created from Miró’s signature black forms. Miró was notified of the odd name choice by the Guggenheim’s director; he declined to alter the work anyway.
It’s not possible to see all of the mural at the Bove show, since the piece remains mostly trapped behind a grey partition. But Bove provides a partial view of the work through a diamond-shaped aperture that she has carved into the wall.
That the mural exists at all is something of an open secret—a part of Guggenheim lore that largely goes unadvertised to the public. When the Guggenheim revealed the mural in its entirety in 2003, as part of a show of works held in the permanent collection, the New York Times reported that the museum’s website didn’t even note that the institution owned the work. (This has since changed: the Guggenheim does have a page for Alicia, albeit one that is not easily accessible from the hub for its collection.)
In her Times report, journalist Carol Vogel noted that the mural was “covered for years because curators thought it interfered with the art on view.” Bove seems to disagree: she includes the mural on the checklist for her show alongside roughly 100 works by herself.
Plus, as the exhibition’s curator, Katharine Brinson, notes in the catalog, “In a fortuitous affinity, Miró’s emblematic palette of blue, red, yellow, and black aligns with some of the most characteristic colors of Bove’s collage sculptures.” Made of brightly hued rectangles of steel that Bove bends and morphs, those sculptures also appear in the show, which opens to the public tomorrow.
