Talk & Book Launch: Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection

On the occasion of ‘Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection’ and the launch of the exhibition catalogue, please join us on Saturday 28 February at 11 am for a conversation with artists Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson and Dr. Kellie Jones and curator Ingrid Schaffner.

Together, they will have an in-depth discussion of Eileen Harris Norton’s influence, examining her impact on the art community as well as the ways her guidance and philosophy have shaped the careers of individual artists.

Renowned for her generosity to artists and institutions, Harris Norton has built a collection and philanthropy actively focused upon the work of women, artists of color and her native California. Marking fifty years since Harris Norton’s first acquisition—a print purchased directly from Los Angeles artist Ruth Waddy in 1976—‘Destiny Is a Rose’ presents more than 80 works that together reflect Harris Norton’s prescient vision and commitment to social justice and learning.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers has released ‘Destiny Is a Rose: Art from the Eileen Harris Norton Collection,’ a catalogue with texts by art historian Kellie Jones and curator Ingrid Schaffner, which delve into the critical role that education and philanthropy, representation and identity, and personal relationships with artists and curators have played in shaping Harris Norton’s visionary collecting practice. Offering deep insight into the act and impact of collecting, 'Destiny Is a Rose' is a tribute to Harris Norton’s ongoing role as a vital agent of change and growth within the contemporary art world.
The program is free to attend, however, reservations are recommended.

About ‘Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection’
Marking fifty years since Eileen Harris Norton’s first acquisition, 'Destiny Is a Rose’ presents more than 80 works that together reflect Harris Norton’s prescient vision and commitment to social justice and learning.

Titled after a painting by Kerry James Marshall, ‘Destiny Is a Rose’ includes work by such artists as Mark Bradford, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon Marshall, Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems and Jack Whitten, among others. In conjunction with ‘Destiny Is a Rose,’ Hauser & Wirth Publishers will release a catalogue featuring text by Dr. Kellie Jones and curator Ingrid Schaffner, celebrating a collector who continues to be an agent of cultural change and growth.
About Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson came to prominence in the early 1990s with her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. Simpson’s early work – particularly her striking juxtapositions of text and staged images – raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history that continue to drive the artist’s expanding and multi-disciplinary practice today. She deftly explores the medium’s umbilical relation to memory and history, both central themes within her work.
Simpson continues to probe these questions while expanding her practice to encompass various media including film, painting, collage and sculpture. Her recent works incorporate appropriated imagery from vintage Jet and Ebony magazines, found photo booth images, and discarded Associated Press photos of natural elements – particularly ice, a motif that appears in her sculptural work in the form of glistening blocks made of glass. Layered and multivalent, Simpson’s practice deploys metaphor, metonymy, and formal prowess to offer a potent response to American life today.
Her works have been exhibited and are in the collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York; TANK Shanghai, Shanghai, China; Glenstone, Potomac MD; Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker, Norway; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Haus der Kunst; Munich amongst others. Important international exhibitions have included the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany, the 56th Venice Biennale, and the Punta della Dogana in Venice, Italy. Simpson has been awarded the J. Paul Getty Medal, Joyce Alexander Wein Prize, Studio Museum of Harlem, Whitney Museum of Art Award, Infinity Award in Art, International Center of Photography, New York, and is the 2026 recipient of the Meraki Artist Award at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
About Gary Simmons
One of the foremost artists of a generation which emerged during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gary Simmons has achieved wide acclaim over the past three decades for his work which explores the politics of race, class and social stereotypes through painting, sculpture, sound and architectural environments. Simmons uses imagery drawn from popular culture to create works that address personal and collective memories.

Born in New York in 1964, Simmons received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1988, and his MFA from CalArts in 1990, studying under the tutelage of Charles Gaines, Michael Asher, Catherine Lord, and others.

Simmons has been the subject of solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including Cookie Factory, Denver; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; and Kunsthaus Zürich. Selected group exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; among others. Simmons was featured in Thelma Golden’s landmark 1994 ‘Black Male’ exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Franklin Sirmans’ 2014 Prospect Triennial in New Orleans, and Okwui Enwezor’s ‘All the World’s Futures,’ for the 2015 Venice Biennale. The first comprehensive institutional survey of Simmons’ work, ‘Public Enemy,’ was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2023 and traveled to Pérez Art Museum Miami from 2023 – 24.

In 2021, Simmons was appointed a National Academician by the National Academy of Design. He is the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize, Studio Museum of Harlem; USA Gund Fellowship; Penny McCall Foundation Grant; National Endowment for the Arts Inter-Arts Grant; and the Aspen Award for Art.
About Kellie Jones
Dr. Kellie Jones is Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History & Archaeology and a Professor in the Department African American & African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latinx and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. A member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Jones was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2016. Her writings have appeared in a multitude of exhibition catalogues and journals. She is the author of two books published by Duke University Press, EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (2011), and South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (2017). Her newest book is October Files: David Hammons (The MIT Press 2025). She is the co-editor of, ‘Black Curators Matter: Conversations on Art and Change,’ forthcoming from Getty Publications in 2026.

About Ingrid Schaffner
Internationally admired as a curator, art critic, writer, and educator with nearly four decades of experience in the field of contemporary art, Schaffner is known for her generative and original scholarship focused on themes of archiving and collecting, photography, feminism, and alternate modernisms. Her 2013 exhibition ‘Jason Rhoades, Four Roads’ was the first American museum presentation of the sculptor’s work and was accompanied by a catalogue publication (Prestel); following its presentation at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, the exhibition traveled to Kunsthalle Bremen and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Schaffner was the curator of the 57th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2018. where she presented major installations by El Anatsui, Alex Da Corte, Zoe Leonard, Postcommodity and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others. From 2020 to 2023, she was the curator at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.

Images: Gary Simmons, Photo: Tito Molina, HRDWRKER; Lorna Simpson, Photo: James Wang; Dr. Kellie Jones, Photo: Daniel Jackson; Ingrid Schaffner, Photo: Bryan Conley

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