Walking into Nick Cave: Mammoth, the new exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, feels like stepping into one huge imaginative environment. Most of it unfolds as a singe, large-scale installation spilling across a long light table in a spacious gallery, with a few more works in a couple of smaller rooms. You don’t just look at it — you move through it.
The work is colorful, inventive, and full of whimsy. But it also carries deeper ideas about time and memory. Numerous sculptures are created from found and crafted objects, items that one might collect or accumulate over years, some of them belonging to Cave.
It seems at once scattered randomly and thoughtfully designed. Old badminton rackets arranged in teepee-like structures, piles of bedazzled ornaments and decorative flowers forming brilliant gardens, and more quirky creations show pieces of Cave’s personal history. It’s interesting and fun to examine all of it both up close and from a few feet back.
A few “mammoth sculptures,” lifeguard chair-esque pieces adorned with crafted horns of the ancient beasts, bring in the distant past in contrast to more recent memories. A background to it all is a large multi-colored, hand-beaded tapestry that covers one whole wall.
The exhibit suggests that the past is made up by what we collect over our lives — not just objects, but memories and experiences, too. And it’s these things that we gather that end up telling our stories for us.
Nick Cave: Mammoth
Where: Smithsonian American Art Museum | Penn Quarter, DC
When: Through January, 3, 2027 | Daily, 11:30am – 7pm
Admission: Free
No Comments