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Manuel Álvarez Bravo Photographs
August 28, 2025 – March 22, 2026
Manuel Álvarez Bravo was the leading photographer working in Mexico during the twentieth century. His early works reveal the influence of Modernism, but he quickly developed a distinctive vision deeply rooted in his native Mexican culture and identity. Like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Álvarez Bravo flourished during the artistic and cultural renaissance that emerged following the Mexican Revolution of 1910 – 1921. Whether documenting the urban landscape of Mexico City or capturing imagery evoking indigenous traditions, his photographs capture a timelessness infused with overtones of mysticism, metaphor, and poetry.
The Adele and Leonard Leight Glass Art Award – Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez
August 7 – October 19, 2025
Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez (American, born 1988), the inaugural recipient of the biennial Adele and Leonard Leight Glass Art Award, will unveil her unique, Speed-commissioned installation work in the original 1927 building’s Gallery 1—a fitting venue for the launch of the Leight Award and its critical support for younger artists who work with glass.
ALL STAFF: Speed Staff Art Show
June 1, 2025 – Ongoing
ALL STAFF showcases the artistic talents of those who keep our museum running, from guest services and protection services to finance and philanthropy. Through painting, sculpture, and mixed media, this exhibition highlights the passion and creativity that extend beyond daily museum operations.
From the Speed Collection: Into a Modern World
Summer 2024 – ongoing
This new installation showcases the Museum’s celebrated 19th and 20th century collections, installed in new arrangements, with updated scholarship, freshly-conserved artworks, and exciting new acquisitions.
Crosscurrents: Contemporary Art from the Speed Art Museum Collection and Beyond
July 19, 2024 – Ongoing
Crosscurrents features an intergenerational presentation comprised of wide-ranging artworks from the permanent collection, recent acquisitions, and a selection of private loans from across the region. The installation showcases some 100 artworks created since 1960 that challenge and shape our views of the world.
Homecoming: A Walking Stick by Henry Gudgell
May 10, 2024 – Ongoing
Homecoming: A Walking Stick by Henry Gudgell celebrates the Speed’s recent acquisition of a vibrant, reptile-clad walking stick created by the Kentucky-born artist Henry Gudgell (1826 or 1829-1895) around 1865 when he was in his thirties and living in rural Livingston County, Missouri. Gudgell was born into enslavement in central Kentucky’s Anderson County, the son of Rachael who was fifteen or sixteen years old at the time of his birth. When Henry was still an infant, he, his mother, and other enslaved women, children, and men were forcibly removed to Ray County, Missouri. In 1853, Henry, then in his twenties, was again forcibly separated from his community when he was sold to another Missouri family.
Kentucky Artists – Kentucky Visions, Gifts from the Anna and Allan Weiss Collection
May 10, 2024 – Ongoing
Kentucky Artists – Kentucky Visions shares, for the first time, generous gifts from the expansive, Kentucky-focused collection of Anna and Allan Weiss, both natives of Louisville. For over forty years as collectors, Anna and Allan have been passionate advocates for many Kentucky artists and their work. In Allan’s words, artists often “became my friends” with their works of art becoming “part of my life with them.”
The Speed Collects: Native American Art
April 4, 2024 – Ongoing
The updated galleries of Native American art will feature not only a reinterpreted view of the museum's existing collection, but also new acquisitions and loans, curated with input from Native artists, curators, and culture-bearers. The reinstallation will catalyze expanded programming designed to bring more Native voices into the everyday life of the Speed Art Museum.
The Speed Collects: Empires to Revolutions, 1700 – 1825
August 19, 2022 — Ongoing
Art history reminds us that we have experienced deep, necessary shifts in national and global consciousness before, often resulting in new ways of thinking and living. This installation reframes the collection of 18th and early 19th century European and American artwork in the Speed’s permanent collection through the lens of social, cultural, economic, and political upheaval and change.
The Speed Collects: Art in Europe
April 15, 2022 — Ongoing
Part of a larger effort to reinstall and re-contextualize our historical collection, this new installation showcases the art of Europe from the 14th through 17th centuries.
Wolfgang Buttress: Blossom
November 2020 – Ongoing
This project uses sculpture, light, and sound to poetically reveal the life and death cycle of trees. For Blossom, the artist Wolfgang Buttress, based in Nottingham, England, documents the fading life of a 200-year-old Bramley apple tree (the mother of all Bramley apple trees), and the flourishing life of this tree’s progeny.