This fall the Pulitzer Arts Foundation explores the art of the multi-disciplinary artist Jennie C. Jones (b. 1968) in an illuminating juxtaposition of exhibitions: one, of Jones’s new and recent work; the other, organized by the artist herself, comprising art by artists who have been touchstones throughout her career.
Jennie C. Jones. Photo credit: Taylor Miller.
A Line When Broken Begins Again features a major site-specific commission alongside a selection of paintings, sound works, and collages. Other Octaves: Curated by Jennie C. Jones presents 34 works of art by a loose network of artists who have inspired Jones throughout her career. A good number—like Mildred Thompson, Ben Patterson, and Mavis Pusey—are still little-known today.
Jennie C. Jones is internationally recognized for developing a body of work that calls attention to relationships between painting, sound, and space. In so doing, she has drawn on the legacy of modernism and minimalism in the visual arts to help ground viewers in the auditory present while transporting them into the history of music, especially that of the Black avant-garde.
“To anyone versed in the history of modern art, Jennie’s abstract paintings will look familiar. But they’re actually radical experiments into bridging a gap in cultural history, one that separates avant-garde visual art from music. We at the Pulitzer are committed to questioning art historical boundaries and so leaped at the opportunity to organize this set of exhibitions,” says Cara Starke, Executive Director, Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
“Jennie presents her first freestanding sculpture for an interior space in A Line When Broken Begins Again,” notes Stephanie Weissberg, Senior Curator at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, who has organized the exhibition with Heather Alexis Smith, Assistant Curator.
Weissberg continues, “In so doing, she extends her career-long investigation into how the very materiality of visual art can be made to enhance a viewer’s consciousness of sound—and, thus, their place in the present. Point of Perspective takes this project even further into the realm of an enveloping space and shifting movement.”
For her part, Jones recalls that, “My aha moment was to thread painting, architecture, and acoustics together, to bring my poetic and heartachy love of music history together with the narrative of how American modernism was constructed.”
Jennie C. Jones: A Line When Broken Begins Again
In light-filled galleries designed by architect Tadao Ando, Jennie C. Jones: A Line When Broken Begins Again brings together a selection of recent and new abstract paintings, which are built from layered architectural felt and acoustic paneling on canvas. Their surface colors that include shades of pale ochre, warm grey, and deep burgundy subtly change in the natural light. Strips of bright red run along the edges of a number of canvases, creating a glowing visual effect that Jones compares to sonic properties like reverbs and hums.
In a group of collages nearby, the artist continues her exploration of the intersection of the sonic and the visual. Jones arranges painted and cut strips of paper, including some that feature musical staff lines, in rhythmic compositions across the page.
The focal point in the Main Gallery is Point of Perspective, a commissioned, site-responsive installation that speaks to Ellsworth Kelly’s totemic Blue Black (2001), a foundational work in the Pulitzer’s permanent collection. As a young artist, Jones greatly admired Kelly’s use of form and color while simultaneously feeling frustration over the pressure she experienced to create work that referred to her identity as a Black woman.
For the Pulitzer installation, Jones has erected a towering flat rectangular shape whose base projects straight out from the front so that the sculpture forms an “L” shape. It mirrors Kelly’s Blue Black in proportion and size and, in its “L” shape, recalls an earlier work by Kelly that was the departure point for Blue Black. As one moves throughout the space, Point of Perspective appears to move from side to side of Kelly’s painting; from one spot in the center of the gallery, it even appears to eclipse it. The backside of the rectangular form, facing Blue Black, is edged bright red, contributing to a red halo effect visible from several points.
In the adjacent Cube Gallery, two sound works—RPM and Interlude—fill the space with reverberating tones that extend into nearby galleries, drawing attention to the materials and forms of Ando’s architecture. These compositions are accompanied by a wash of rose-colored light that echoes the distinctive red hums present nearby in Jones’s paintings and Point of Perspective, transforming the space into an immersive sensory environment. Together, sound and light underscore the artist’s long-standing exploration of the interplay between the visual and the aural. The installation also highlights Jones’s deep engagement with architecture, and specifically with Ando’s materiality. This marks her second site-responsive work created in dialogue with an Ando-designed building. In 2020, she debuted These (Mournful) Shores, a monumental sculpture extending from the Clark Art Institute’s Ando structure.
Other Octaves: Curated by Jennie C. Jones
Organized by Jones, Other Octaves: Curated by Jennie C. Jones transforms the lower level of the museum into a variegated homage to artists whose work has served as her inspiration. Many worked in the ‘60s and ‘70s, including Carmen Herrera, Agnes Martin, and Benjamin Wigfall.
“I’m not interested in organizing an art historical exhibition here, but, rather, a picture of the resonances across various practices and media that have informed my thinking,” notes Jones. “I’ve long admired these artists for resolutely following their own paths and, in so doing, disrupting and providing a counterpoint to the mainstream art dialogues of their day.”
Occupying the first gallery is Anne Truitt’s Harvest Shade (1996), a rectangular column painted a buttery yellow and capped with a lavender top, the colors so subtly shaded as to make the sculpture change in color as the viewer moves around it. Truitt was invested in using color to imbue her work with memories and emotions that were personal to her life experience and observations of nature.
In the Lower East Gallery hangs Alma Thomas’s Red Tree in High Winter (1968), a cornerstone work for Jones. Jones recalls being very moved by its palette of greens and pinks when she first encountered the work. Still further into the gallery are a number of works also related to Jones’s interest in abstraction and color, including Carmen Herrera’s Borealis (1966/2016), a brilliant tutorial on the use of negative space and color in creating form, a concern that Jones shares. Another highlight is Agnes Martin’s Benevolence (2001), a pale fugue of delicate, creamy oranges, slate grays, and bluish stripes applied in a controlled and meditative manner onto a sizable canvas.
A constellation of works investigating music composition are found in the Lower West Gallery. Ben Patterson was a classically trained bassist and Fluxus artist who was committed to stretching the bounds of musical conventions. Other Octaves features ephemera related to Patterson’s Variations for Double-Bass, a legendary performance of absurdist gestures the artist first performed in Germany in 1962. Black and white photographs show the artist running a spoon across the bridge of a double bass and agitating strings with a piece of rope, performative gestures that are among those suggested in a typed carbon copy of the work’s score, on display nearby.
Other graphic scores and conceptual works are featured in the exhibition. Incomplete Text #6 “E” (1978-1979) by Charles Gaines is a text divided up into three different pages that must be combined to be read, and Hanne Darboven’s Month III (March) (1974) features a coded numerical system the artist devised to record her experiences over a month.
In her own work, Jones prizes creating works on paper as a way to improvise and experiment. In Other Octaves, she brings together other works created in that spirit. Here, the visitor encounters an untitled 1969 collage by Mildred Thompson. The all-white patchworked piece is composed of spare geometric forms. In contrast to the riotously colored paintings for which Thompson is best known, the intimate work demonstrates the artist’s ability to create a sense of dynamic movement even when using a restrained palette. Other works in this section include a woodcut by Martin Puryear (2016), collages by Louise Nevelson (1972), three prints by Mavis Pusey (1963, 1965, 1970) and a relief collagraph by Zarina (1969).
Publication
As well as visually documenting the two exhibitions, the accompanying publication Jennie C. Jones, provides context by way of new essays by Jones and Weissberg. The publication also brings together a number of Jones’s critical writings about art that has influenced her. The book’s design reflects Jones’s own aesthetic and interest in scores, sheet music, notation, and rhythm. It will be available in January 2026.
The Artist
Born in 1968 in Cincinnati, OH, Jennie C. Jones lives and works in Hudson, New York.
Ensemble, her acclaimed Roof Garden Commission at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is currently on view through October 19, 2025. Other solo exhibitions have included Jennie C. Jones: Dynamics, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2022); Jennie C. Jones: Constant Structure, The Arts Club of Chicago, IL (2020); Directions: Jennie C. Jones: Higher Resonance, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2013); and Counterpoint, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2011), among others. Her work has been featured in countless group exhibitions, including Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, New Orleans, LA (2020); Ground/work, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2020); Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2020); and The Shape of Shape, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY (2019). Jones’ work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MoMA; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Robert Rauschenberg Award (2016); Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2013); The Studio Museum in Harlem, Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2012); and William H. Johnson Prize (2008). Jones teaches at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, in the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
About the Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Located in the Grand Center Arts District, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation is dedicated to bringing world-class art and exhibitions to the St. Louis region. Exhibitions include both contemporary and historic art and are complemented by a wide range of free public programs, including music, literary arts, dance, and cultural discussions. Open and free to all, the Pulitzer is a cultural and civic asset to the St. Louis community and a popular destination for visitors from around the world. The museum is open Thursday through Sunday, 10am–5pm, with evening hours until 8pm on Friday. For more information, visit pulitzerarts.org.
