Installation view of Linda Lighton’s “Taking Aim” series, part of the artist’s impassioned advocacy against gun violence
The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art presents an illuminating overview of the pioneering Kansas City artist’s dynamic evolution
For half a century, Linda Lighton has created a vast repertoire of ceramic sculptures, exploring the many facets of what it means to desire. From a young girl, stifled by her affluent father’s control, to a free-loving artist trekking through the United States, to an internationally recognized artist and anti-gun violence advocate, Lighton’s life and work have been prolific and pioneering. Her career of creation and subversion is now being recognized in an extensive retrospective at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in “Linda Lighton: Love & War, A Fifty-Year Survey, 1975-2025.” Guest curated by Sydney Stutterheim, PhD, with curatorial assistance from Lighton’s daughter, Rose Dergan, the retrospective coincides with the release of a scholarly monograph of the same title, including essays, illustrations and a timeline of the artist’s life.
Situated on the first floor of the museum in the Oppenheimer, Thompson and Anonymous Galleries, “Love & War” opens with Lighton’s early works of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including her “Americana” series that takes everyday objects of status or occupation and comments on convention and consumerism. “Working Man’s Dilemma” blends the ubiquitous figures of a briefcase with a gas pump, inviting viewers to consider the consequences of capitalism and oil consumption.
The next room juxtaposes Lighton’s “Building People” series against her “Divas” series. As the title suggests, the “Building People” series depicts individuals as architecture. Because they have gotten so steeped in their roles, they are literally boxed in and constrained by their external environments. “Cities are defined by their architecture, but people are defined by their demeanor, their personality, their habits,” Lighton says. “This can be confining, a kind of entrapment, so manners, self-control and appearances maybe don’t reveal the inner person.”
In contrast, the “Divas” series anthropomorphizes rare orchids as fluid, joyful, sexual women. These “Divas” are vibrantly colored and seem to be in motion, with petal tongues poking playfully from their floral mouths. Lighton explains, “This is about celebrating the lifeforce and the dangerous beauty of the lifeforce, entailing seduction, sexual prowess and moaning hormones.”
Examining natural life continues in the third room, which is filled with Lighton’s long-standing depiction of the natural world through detailed ceramic sculptures of sea sponges, tubeworms and flora. “These bulbs, pods, and organic forms are about life unfolding, families, birth, growing, shedding old skins, emerging, branching out and death,” Lighton says in an artist statement. These pieces emanate life, as flowers protrude from twisting vines and richly colored sea creatures seem to be in motion despite their sculptural permanence. Splits in Lighton’s circular “Globes” open to reveal vulvar interiors, and tubeworms stand phallically upright. Life in all forms is on display, from birth to longing to death.
These soft, colorful creatures give way to the cold metal of firearms in the next room, filled with Lighton’s “Taking Aim” series. These sculptures, often cast from actual weapons, are a part of Lighton’s impassioned advocacy against gun violence. “Supreme Justice” depicts the black robe with a lacey collar worn by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the center of the robe is a uterus with a gun aimed at the viewer. In her essay “Voracious Things: Linda Lighton and the Objects of Desire,” curator Stutterheim observes, “The interconnections between the multiple forms of desire that I argue are integral to Lighton’s oeuvre come together in “Supreme Justice”: a desire for personal freedom and choice; a desire to love how, why, and whom we want; a desire to embrace ambition, achieve greatness and break molds; and a desire to pursue life without fear of unnecessary violence.”
The exhibition closes in a black room, lit from above by “Luminous,” Lighton’s porcelain light sculpture that is a commentary on death. At her artist talk for the exhibition, Lighton mused, “Desire is from the earth. It smells. It’s sex. It’s all this stuff.” However, when a close friend died, Lighton was struck by the sudden lack of desire in that person. She thought, “Oh, you don’t have desire anymore. It’s such a surprise. Your energy is still there, but there’s no color in it.” Now, as the population ages, she notes the need to face the reality of death.
“Luminous” is formed from porcelain and has “no smell, no color, no weight.” Numerous fuchsia flowers are, as Lighton describes, “limpid, and they’re hanging down ready to be gone.” A musical composition from Paul Rudy, including wind and water recordings, accompanies the piece. Says Lighton, “I hope the viewing of this work will transport the audience to a contemplative, dreamy place to escape the mundane and consider the ethereal and ephemeral.”
Lighton’s artistic voice is often subversive and rebellious, blazing new paths for women, ceramics and art in general. After numerous exhibitions throughout the world, viewers can now experience the expansive arc of Lighton’s career through this retrospective. “Linda Lighton’s 50-year career and commitment to art, artists, social justice, human rights, and gun control is evidenced through her magnificent body of work, currently on view at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Love & War,” says executive director and chief curator JoAnne Northrup. “The quality and vision demonstrated by her work, as well as her commitment to promoting culture in Kansas City, are some of the reasons why I decided to give her a major career survey exhibition at the museum and produce a scholarly monograph on her work. Quite simply — she earned the honor — and she deserves it.”
“Linda Lighton: Love & War, A Fifty-Year Survey, 1975-2025” continues at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, through May 3. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Friday, Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Closed Mondays. For more information, 913.469.3000 or www.nermanmuseum.org.
photos by E.G. Schempf
