William Kentridge

William Kentridge’s works have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide since the 1990s, including at documenta in Kassel (1997, 2003, 2012), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1998, 2010), the Albertina Museum in Vienna (2010), Jeu de Paume in Paris (2010), and the Musée du Louvre (2010). There he presented “Carnets d’Egypte,” a project conceived specifically for the Egyptian collection. Kentridge’s production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” was performed at La Monnaie theater in Brussels, at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and in 2011 at La Scala in Milan. His production of Shostakovich’s opera “The Nose” was performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 2010 and 2013 and made guest appearances at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and in Lyon in 2011. The 5-channel video and sound installation The Refusal of Time was developed for documenta 13 in Kassel in 2012 and has since been shown at the MAXXI in Rome, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and in other cities, including Boston, Perth, Kyoto, Helsinki, and Wellington.

In 2012, a comprehensive retrospective exhibition opened in Rio de Janeiro, which traveled to Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Bogotá, Medellín, and Mexico City in the following years. In 2014, his production of Schubert’s Winterreise was performed at the Vienna Festival, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and the Holland Festival. Since then, it has been performed at Lincoln Center in New York, in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other European cities. “Paper Music,” a concert with projections and live compositions by Philip Miller, premiered in Florence and was performed at Carnegie Hall in New York in October 2014. William Kentridge’s production of Alban Berg’s “Lulu” premiered in Amsterdam in the summer of 2015 and was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in November of the same year. In November 2016, the production will be performed at the English National Opera in London.

“More Sweetly Play the Dance” is an 8-channel video projection. It was first shown in April 2015 in an installation at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam and has since been shown in Germany, London, New York, and Milan. Notes Toward a Model Opera, a projection on three surfaces dealing with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, is the main element of a new retrospective exhibition that opened in Beijing in June 2015 (further stops include the MMCA in Seoul and other cities in the Far East). The work has also been shown in solo exhibitions at the Marian Goodman Gallery in London and New York and the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. For the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, Kentridge created a site-specific sound and video installation entitled “O Sentimental Machine.” Kentridge’s ambitious public art project for Rome, “Triumphs & Laments” (an approximately 500-meter-long frieze for which pollution and bacterial growth are removed from the boundary walls of the Tiber with a high-pressure cleaner in such a way that figures emerge), depicting the triumphs and lamentations of Roman history, opened at the end of 2016.

In 2010, William Kentridge was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize for his achievements in art and philosophy. In 2011, he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of London. In 2012, Kentridge delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University and was appointed a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Society of Arts and Sciences. In the same year, he received the Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University and was appointed Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Arts and Communication. In 2013, Kentridge received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Yale University. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by the University of Cape Town, and in 2015 he was appointed Honorary Academician of the Royal Academy in London.