LOS ANGELES — “T” stands for “tight rope.” A minimum of, it does in late artist Sister Corita Kent’s circus alphabet (1968), a 30-part sequence of serigraph prints that every function a letter. Within the “T” print, the phrases “High Wire Artists” seem alongside illustrations of formally dressed figures strolling throughout precarious, taut traces. The metaphor feels apt: One can simply think about Corita (she most well-liked to make use of her first title) standing amongst their multitalented ilk. Till 1968 (she handed away in 1976), she was a member of Hollywood’s Sisters of the Immaculate Coronary heart of Mary. There, she juggled duties as an artwork instructor, Roman Catholic nun, left-wing advocate, and artist — a lot to the dismay of Los Angeles’s conservative Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, who regularly clashed with Corita over her activist art work and reform beliefs.
In Corita Kent: Sorcery of Photographs at Marciano Artwork Basis (MAF), the artist’s work once more seems within the shadow of fraught establishments. MAF, a non-public museum housed in a hulking former Scottish Ceremony Masonic Temple, has been dogged by its personal controversies since 2017, dealing with criticism for its opaque construction and lack of accountability. In 2019, it closed quickly simply days after its part-time service workers introduced a unionization drive — and it nonetheless faces allegations that, like many non-public museums, it serves as extra of a tax haven than a civic establishment (MAF presently doesn’t have a board of administrators to reply to, based on 2020 reporting from the Los Angeles Instances).
Set up view of Corita Kent, “Sorcery of Images” (undated), picks from the Corita Slide Assortment edited by Michelle Silva, 1,132 35mm slides transferred to digital TIFF information
The exhibition features a collection of screenprints and serigraphs within the foyer, library, and adjoining rooms, and a big, ground-floor theater gallery homes the exhibition’s main set up, “Corita Kent: Sorcery of Images” (2025), the place a trio of huge rectangular screens present picks from the artist’s never-before-seen photographic archive. The art work on view is much less didactic or polemic than the artist herself. As a substitute, it’s a name to “trust in the artist, in everyone, to make their own connections,” as Corita is quoted as saying within the press launch. Projected onto canvases suspended from the ceiling, the primary set up recollects the lecture corridor slide shows that might have been acquainted to Corita from her time as an educator, and invokes the lecture rooms within the former Masonic Temple, the place members had been educated within the order’s esoteric spiritual rituals.
The set up’s construction permits which means to build up by means of affiliation relatively than argument. The three screens flicker by means of the “presentation” at diverse charges, combining documentary pictures of each day life with these highlighting Corita’s political advocacy. Hyperlinks between quotidian LA sights and her activism come up naturally by means of the set up’s montage-like fashion: Recurring pictures of kites and celebratory balloons on the sisters’ Mary’s Day parade seem silhouetted towards clear, brilliant skies, creating pictures that resemble Corita’s pictures of her sisters at political protests, their habits stark towards the heavenly blue hue. Right here, their activism is revealed as a sort of ritual pleasure, an occasion as celebratory and reverential as some other spiritual vacation.
In circus alphabet, W is for “what women know.” The serigraph’s accompanying quote is taken from an E. E. Cummings poem that declares, “damn everything that is … unrisking, inward turning.” Although this exhibition dangers little, it provides a precious view into the artist’s outward-facing life — one entwined with problematic establishments. For Corita, this battle may nonetheless produce the sacred: In 1964, she unveiled a big anti-war billboard, a show alternative that merged her activist art work with the type of industrial, capitalistic avenue indicators dominating skylines. She referred to as it “the most religious thing I have ever done.”
Set up view of Corita Kent, “Mary’s Day Procession, May 1966, Immaculate Heart College” (1966), 35 mm slide transferred to vinyl
Set up view of Corita Kent: Sorcery of Photographs inside the Marciano Artwork Basis library
Set up view of Corita Kent, circus alphabet (1968), 30 serigraphs
Set up view of Corita Kent, “Sorcery of Images” (undated), picks from the Corita Slide Assortment edited by Michelle Silva, 1,132 35mm slides transferred to digital TIFF information
Corita Kent: The Sorcery of Photographs continues on the Marciano Artwork Basis (4357 Wilshire Boulevard, Windsor Sq., Los Angeles) by means of January 24, 2026.
