Through June 20, 2027
How does an artwork attain the status of an icon? What does this passage into visibility—or its refusal—reveal about the narratives we construct, the memories we activate, the communities we shape?
Drawing from the Sursock Museum’s collection, enriched by public and private loans, the exhibition examines dynamics of recognition, exclusion, and legitimization in modern and contemporary art. Some works emerge as visual landmarks charged with evocative power; others remain on the margins—ignored, displaced, or forgotten. Identity figures, sites of memory, pivotal events, recurring motifs: these are forms that crystallize collective stakes. By approaching them as points of tension, the exhibition offers a critical reading of what makes an icon.
Throughout the exhibition, selected definitions—form, symbol, circulation, community, model, marker, absorption, emblem, diffusion, or unity—appear and reappear, raising questions around the process of iconization and the museum’s role in shaping visual memory. Becoming an icon is not merely a matter of reception, but an active, conflicted, and deeply political process.
In resonance with the collective narratives carried by any museum institution, certain works reactivate inherited forms, make visible marginalized memories, or interrogate the artwork’s very capacity to embody.
July 17, 2025
