Joan Semmel: In the Flesh

This month, the Jewish Museum presents a major exhibition of boundary-breaking work by Joan Semmel alongside a selection of artist-curated works from the Museum’s collection in Joan Semmel: In the Flesh. For over 50 years, Semmel has upended traditional figuration with her boldly declarative nude painting through gestural and hyperreal representation. Joan Semmel: In the Flesh juxtaposes 16 paintings by the artist, drawn from several periods across her career, many monumental in scale, with nearly 50 modern and contemporary artworks from the Museum’s expansive holdings. The works from the collection—encompassing painting, sculpture, photography, and works on paper—were selected by the artist for their engagement with themes present in her work, including her exploration of beauty, agency, and self-perception.

On view from December 12, 2025 through May 31, 2026, Joan Semmel: In the Flesh opens as the Museum renews its commitment to examining its multifaceted holdings, following the unveiling of its reimagined permanent collection galleries and new center for learning. The exhibition is organized by Rebecca Shaykin, Barnett & Annalee Newman Curator of Contemporary Art, and Liz Munsell, Curatorial Consultant, in partnership with Joan Semmel.

Born in 1932 into a secular Jewish family in the Bronx, Semmel trained as an Abstract Expressionist in New York before moving to Madrid in 1963, where she enjoyed early success on an international stage. Upon her return to New York in 1970 as a newly divorced mother of two, she found community within the burgeoning feminist and anti-censorship movements, alongside her peers, including Judith Bernstein, Louise Bourgeois, Joyce Kozloff, Joan Snyder, Anita Steckel, Hannah Wilke, and other trailblazing women artists. During this period, she also curated two of the earliest exhibitions of contemporary feminist art, giving women artists a public platform denied to them by many mainstream institutions. Over the course of the following decades, Semmel forged a distinct painterly language of nude imagery that was a defiant response to the male gaze and spoke to her own bodily experience as a woman, emphasizing female empowerment and sexual agency. At 93, Semmel remains a master of figuration, continuing to challenge views of female aging and respectability.

Joan Semmel: In the Flesh foregrounds the artist’s diligent, life-long investigation of embodied female experience. Spanning over 50 years of the artist’s practice, the exhibition offers new points of entry to some of Semmel’s most pivotal series. Works on view include her 1978 painting Sunlight, one of Semmel’s iconic self-images and a defining work of the feminist movement, together with examples from her bold, high-key Erotic Series of the early 1970s, as well as complex multi-figure compositions, including the recent large-scale Skin in the Game (2019).

The kaleidoscopic selection of Semmel’s featured works provides context for artworks from the Museum’s collection by artists including Ida Applebroog, Marc Chagall, Nan Goldin, David Levinthal, Alice Neel, Nancy Spero, Man Ray, Larry Rivers, Laurie Simmons, Joan Snyder, and Hannah Wilke, among others.

Publication
Joan Semmel: In the Flesh will be accompanied by an illustrated brochure featuring an interview with the artist, reflecting on her life and career. 

Support
Leadership support of the Jewish Museum’s exhibitions is provided by the Knapp Family Foundation.

Major support of Joan Semmel: In the Flesh is provided by Denise Littlefield Sobel. Additional support is provided by the Melva Bucksbaum Fund for Contemporary Art, the Barbara S. Horowitz Contemporary Art Fund, and the Skirball Fund for American Jewish Life Exhibitions, and other generous donors.

About the Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum explores the vibrancy of Jewish world culture through art. Located on New York City’s famed Museum Mile, in the landmarked Warburg Mansion, the Museum was the first institution of its kind in the United States and is among the oldest Jewish museums in the world. The Jewish Museum preserves a unique collection of more than 30,000 works of art, archaeology, and ceremonial objects, while presenting exhibitions that relate to the global Jewish experience over 3,500 years. Bridging past and present, the Jewish Museum explores cross-cultural influences and offers new insights into key narratives that shape the human experience.