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The Kentucky Gallery Reimagined
Fall 2024 – ongoing
When the Speed’s 5,600-square-foot Kentucky Gallery first opened in 2016, it became Kentucky’s only art museum space dedicated to presenting and interpreting the state’s many artistic traditions. In the years since, the gallery has welcomed thousands of visitors, including many students, teachers, visiting scholars, and groups from other museums across the United States.
Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900-1939
March 29 – June 22, 2025
During the early twentieth century, Paris was the destination of choice for talented and independent American women determined to move beyond the limitations that restricted them at home. Drawn by a strong desire for independence, they crossed the Atlantic to pursue personal and professional ambitions in a city viewed as the epicenter of modernity. Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900-1939 recaptures the experiences of these unorthodox women who found in Paris the freedom to blaze new trails in a variety of fields, including art, literature, design, publishing, music, fashion, journalism, theater, and dance
Childe Hassam - Impressions in Black and White
May 1 – August 17, 2025
Childe Hassam was already one of America’s most celebrated Impressionist painters when, in 1915 at the age of 56, he turned his attention to printmaking. He embraced etching and lithography with enthusiasm, and the challenges of working in fresh media reinvigorated his art. He developed a new, linear vocabulary to portray his impressions of the fleeting effects of light and air, translating the broken, flecked painted brushstrokes of Impressionism into short, staccato hatch marks.
Louisville's Black Avant-Garde: Gloucester Caliman (G.C.) Coxe
June 7 – September 7, 2025
The third in the Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde series, this exhibition will focus on G.C. Coxe, “the Dean of African American artists in Louisville.” In 1955, at age forty-eight, Coxe became one of the first Black artists to graduate with a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Louisville. He became a co-founder and integral member of the Louisville Art Workshop (1966 - 1978) and mentored younger artists like Ed Hamilton and William Duffy.
The Adele and Leonard Leight Glass Art Award – Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez
Opening August 7, 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.
Manuel Álvarez Bravo - Photographs from the Collection of the Speed Art Museum
August 28, 2025 – January 4, 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.
Current Speed: Vian Sora - Outerworlds
October 10, 2025 – January 18, 2026
Speed Art Museum is proud to announce Vian Sora: Outerworlds, a multi-venue, mid-career survey of painter Vian Sora (b. 1976, Baghdad). Organized jointly with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Asia Society Texas in Houston, this exhibition will assemble approximately 20 of Sora’s major works, charting her growth as an artist over a period of seven years (2016-2023). Outerworlds is Sora’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States and will tell the story of how her multivalent paintings abstractly channel the tumultuous events of her life, ancient Mesopotamian history, Western art history, and Iraq’s diverse natural landscapes, including its deserts, rivers, and archeological sites.
Otherworldly Journeys - The Fantastical Worlds of Bosch and Bruegel
October 17, 2025 – February 1, 2026
The art of Bosch and Bruegel is full of imagination and fantasy. At a time when other artists adhered to tradition, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel were constantly developing novel subject matter and inventing new imagery. Satire and mockery alternated with extraordinary visions of heaven and hell, whether portraying boisterous peasants or saints being tormented by malevolent beasts.
LaVon Van Williams Jr. - Everything Must Change
November 6, 2025 – March 8, 2026
Based in Lexington, Kentucky, LaVon Van Williams Jr. creates dynamic narratives via carved and polychromed figures and panels, along with paintings on canvas. Some works speak to his own life, identity, and experiences or to episodes in Black history; others forefront both actual and imagined Black musicians, religious leaders, educators, and others; and some blend the personal and the historical.