DALLAS, TX.- The Nasher Sculpture Center announces its 2025 summer show, Generations: 150 Years of Sculpture, on view May 17 – August 24, 2025. Drawn from the Nasher’s permanent collection, the new selection of works features numerous recent acquisitions and offers conversations about the possibilities for sculpture, both past and present.

Traversing much of the museum’s galleries and garden, Generations is a collaboration between the museum’s curators—Interim Director and Chief Curator Jed Morse, Senior Curator Dr. Catherine Craft, Curator Dr. Leigh Arnold, and Curatorial Assistant Sydney Smith—and demonstrates the Nasher's continued efforts to expand and deepen the representation of key practitioners of the medium. From the beginning, founders Raymond and Patsy Nasher collected works by artists of different generations, finding common threads between them despite the span of years that might separate their creations. Recent additions to the collection, received from individuals and foundations as well as Nasher Drawings Forum purchases, continue the Nashers’ tradition of generosity and insight.

The exhibition features over 50 works of art, 22 acquired in the last year, including 11 of 36 works as part of a major gift that the museum has received from Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger in 2024. This landmark support for the institution is one of the largest gifts on record from a private family since the museum’s founding by Raymond and Patsy Nasher in 2003. The gift includes works by 24 artists, with sculptures by Nairy Baghramian, Kevin Beasley, Huma Bhabha, Anthony Caro, Jaume Plensa, Jean Tinguely and many others.

The period encompassed by Generations spans two world wars, astounding technological innovations, dramatic changes to the earth’s environment, and increased movement across geographic borders for people of all kinds. All the while, artists have continued to find new ways to give form to concerns as old as humanity itself. Conversations among the artworks fall into thematic groupings of sculptures and works on paper by artists of different generations. For example, contemporary artists such as Frances Bagley, Julian Hoeber, and James Sullivan share an enduring fascination for the human figure with historical predecessors like Auguste Rodin, Alberto Giacometti and Willem de Kooning. Artists exploring the role of the void in sculpture include Barbara Hepworth (in the garden) as well as Tony Cragg, Anish Kapoor, Tony Marsh, and Beverly Semmes, while Jonathan Borofsky, Jeff Gibbons, and Jean Tinguely consider sound and mechanical movement as elements of their work. Downstairs, sculptors ranging from Jean (Hans) Arp, Alexander Calder, and David Smith to Jody Pinto, and Matthew Ronay consider our connections to the natural world.

“Generations gave the curators at the Nasher Sculpture Center a unique opportunity to trace practices and themes central to Modern and contemporary sculpture within our truly remarkable and growing collection,” says Interim Director and Chief Curator Jed Morse. “It also, in a sense, encapsulates the heart of the museum’s mission, communicating the varied and powerful ways sculpture is used as an essential form of human expression through artists represented in our collection, past and present, made across the globe and right here in Dallas.”