Taryn Simon's upcoming solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York will introduce a milestone for the institution when it opens on September 18.
For the first time, the museum will dedicate its entire rotunda to a single new body of work by one artist working across photography and video. The project, titled Father Country I Do Love You, has been developed over nearly a decade and will also appear alongside an artist book published by the Guggenheim and Hatje Cantz.
The exhibition brings together 42 objects, including photographs, texts, videos, and sculptures that have not been shown before. At its center is the story of an unnamed federal agent, with Simon tracing the wider consequences of his life and work through a layered visual narrative.
The project is also deeply personal. Simon has dedicated it to her late father, whose international career and later diagnosis with Alzheimer's shaped the emotional core of the work. The artist has described the project as an attempt to understand a story that could no longer be fully recovered.
Curator Nat Trotman says the exhibition reflects themes of memory, empathy, survival, and the hidden forces that shape public life. By placing a new work of this scale inside the Guggenheim's iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda, the museum is opening a fresh chapter in how contemporary art can occupy its most recognizable space. It may help redefine how major institutions present immersive, single-artist exhibitions in the future.
