The Menil Collection The Menil Collection

Tacita Dean: Blind Folly is the first major museum survey in the United States of work by British European visual artist Tacita Dean (b. 1965). The exhibition, organized in close collaboration with Dean, spotlights her career-defining approach to creating art through unmediated and chance-based drawing processes across a variety of mediums, from film to printmaking.

Blind Folly, the show’s title, reflects Dean’s desire to let the behavior of her mediums dictate the results of her work. For the artist, the playful and old-fashioned phrase connoting foolishness, “blind folly,” represents the role chance and fate play in the creative act.

The exhibition includes new works inspired by the artist’s time in Houston, some following her residency at the Menil’s Cy Twombly Gallery, alongside Dean’s monumental blackboard drawings and groups of rarely shown drawings from her studio on paper, found postcards, and albumen photographs. A separate gallery presents a rotating group of her 16mm films.

Claes Oldenburg Draws Blueberry Pie: October 11–December 1, 2024
This intimate portrait of the American Pop artist Claes Oldenburg (1929–2022) celebrates the act and pleasure of drawing. One of several films by Dean that examines the creative practice of other artists, it captures the virtuosic draughtsman at work in his Manhattan studio.

The Friar’s Doodle: December 4, 2024–January 12, 2025
Dean used a close-up lens to follow the lines of a drawing that a Franciscan friar gave to the artist when she was a child. Like a labyrinthine journey, the hypnotic film leads the viewer along a path that is never revealed in its entirety.

Edwin Parker: January 15–March 9, 2025
This film provides a rare glimpse into the life of Edwin Parker, artist Cy Twombly’s given name. Shot just nine months before his death, it presents Twombly in tranquil observation, going about his daily life. Dean used simple activities to reflect on the cerebral work of an artist and the quiet, everyday moments that lead to acts of creation.

The Green Ray: March 12–April 19, 2025
In this short film, Dean captured an image of the green ray, a rare phenomenon when the horizon line briefly flashes green at the moment of the sun’s emergence or disappearance from sight. The emerald effect, often too subtle for human eyes to perceive or video to capture, fleetingly appears between frames in this film. The artist considers The Green Ray a testament to the power and beauty of celluloid.

Copublished by the Menil and MACK is Blind Folly or How Tacita Dean Draws by Michelle White, Senior Curator, The Menil Collection. The text, illustrated with more than forty images, is based on seven years of conversation between the author and the artist.

In early 2025, for the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Menil’s Cy Twombly Gallery, the museum and MACK will publish an artist book by Dean. Why Cy will be filled with hypnotic and colorful images and a small booklet of notes and drawings conceived by the artist during a residency at the Twombly Gallery and in response to the gestural and linear exuberance of the paintings on view by the late American artist.

Tacita Dean: Blind Folly is curated by Michelle White, Senior Curator, The Menil Collection.

Underwriting for this exhibition is generously provided by Lea Weingarten; Nina and Michael Zilkha; and Texas Commission on the Arts. Major funding for this exhibition is provided by Clare Casademont and Michael Metz; Cecily E. Horton; Nancy O’Connor; and Morris A. Weiner and Leslie Field. Additional support comes from Mary and Marcel Barone; Hilda Curran; John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Cece and Mack Fowler; Frost Bank; Barbara and Michael Gamson; Janet and Paul Hobby; Caroline Huber; Linda and George Kelly; Anne Levy Charitable Trust; Rebecca Marvil and Brian Smyth; Susan and Francois de Menil; Fan and Peter Morris; Franci Neely; Carol and David Neuberger; Sheila Noeth and Ted Dohmen; Mark W. and Angela Laswell Smith; and the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.