The Modern Throws a Barbecue

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents Rebecca Manson: Barbecue, on view from May 24 to August 25, 2024.

Organized by the Modern’s Assistant Curator Clare Milliken, this is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition and is accompanied by a publication. The immersive exhibition is displayed in the Modern’s elliptical gallery on the first floor.

Artist Rebecca Manson and the Modern’s Assistant Curator Clare Milliken in Rebecca’s studio.
Photo courtesy of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Barbecue is a site-responsive installation that both distills and magnifies core elements central to Manson’s work. Comprised of thousands of individually crafted ceramic leaves, flowers, a barbecue grill, and assorted detritus that swell into piles, Barbecue allows for moments of self-reflection. The mounds, some standing over six feet high, are piled against the walls of the ellipse, creating a path inviting visitors to explore the space. Manson’s visual language derives from nature but elicits the complexities of human experience, evoking universal questions about life, mortality, anxiety, nostalgia, memory, and humanity’s connection to nature. The leaves not only relate to the cyclical nature of a person’s life, changing from one season to another, but also to the internal struggle to either collect and contain one’s emotions or release them.

Rebecca Manson
Barbecue, 2024 (detail)
Porcelain, glaze, steel, adhesives and glass
Dimensions variable.
Photo courtesy of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Manson was born in 1989 in New York, where she currently lives and works. She received her BFA in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011. Her work has been featured in numerous shows across the country, including Perhaps the Truth (October 2023–March 2024) at Ballroom Marfa.