SARASOTA, FLA.- Romantic partners for more than 30 years, Larry Fink (1941-2023) and Martha Posner (b. 1956) often edited one another’s work in their studios. Radically different artists at first glance, Fink’s photographs and Posner’s multimedia works have always been exhibited separately. Sarasota Art Museum at Ringling College of Art and Design unites their artwork for the first time and highlights the power of creative partnership in “Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone,” on view Nov. 17, 2024-April 13, 2025.

The exhibition presents 90 photographs by Fink in conversation with nearly 80 works by Posner, including sculpture, drawings and multimedia works. Exploring the creative dialog between the two contemporary artists reveals subtle and surprising qualities in both, including common themes of desire, beauty, vulnerability and brutality.



“‘Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone’ offers a glimpse into the artists’ decades-long partnership in life and art,” said Virginia Shearer, Sarasota Art Museum’s executive director. “By looking at both of their artistic practices independently, visitors will discover similarities and shared influence across their distinct bodies of work. Sarasota Art Museum celebrates the creative process and values the role that artists play to inspire our community to experiment, question and empathize.”


Martha Posner (American, born 1956). “Pink Bed Jacket” (detail), 2024. Found object, synthetic hair, and hair of the artist. Courtesy of the artist.

Throughout his career, Fink photographed seemingly distinct worlds, making intimate records of public figures, wealthy socialites and extravagant parties while also capturing the intensity of boxers, jazz musicians and other artists. He regularly photographed his community in rural Pennsylvania while also covering events like the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, fashion shows, political conventions and civil rights marches. “Flesh and Bone” features some of Fink’s most iconic photographs, including those from “Social Graces,” a widely acclaimed exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979 and book of the same title, published in 1984. All of these subjects contrast with photographs that explore the dynamic energies on Fink’s farm.

“I first came to the farm in the early 1990s,” said Posner. “I loved everything about it, and I never left. Sharing this exhibition with Larry almost makes me feel like he is still here with me.”


Martha Posner (American, born 1956). “Mercy,” 2011-2016. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

Fink and Posner met in 1992 and wed on their Pennsylvania farm in May 2000. Grounded by their rural homestead, both artists felt a strong connection to nature and embraced animals as an extension of the human world. Fink began photographing the farm and neighboring community in the 1970s. When Posner arrived in the 1990s, she immediately took to her surroundings, seeking magic and transfiguration throughout the woods and meadows. The exhibition includes photographs and paintings of animals as well as the natural landscape that inspires their practice.


Martha Posner (American, born 1956). “Memory of Flight IV,” 2010. Fencing, beeswax, found objects, synthetic hair, feathers and pigment. Courtesy of the artist.

Posner is known for her innovative use of natural organic materials, often personally gathered from the forest and fields near her home. Her works explore the natural world, myth and women’s experience. “Flesh and Bone” includes sculptures from Posner’s “Mercy” series, featuring figures created from beeswax, hair, feathers, fabric, pigment and found objects. Watercolor drawings from the artist’s “Frozen Charlotte” series and haunting garments with hand-lettered ink from her “#MeToo” series are also on view along with an ongoing project that explores the power in clothing, hair and bodily presence.

The exhibition reveals how both artists investigate concepts of myth and legend through their art. Several of Posner’s works demonstrate this directly through imagery alluding to female legends, mythic traditions, folklore and fairytales. Fink’s photographs present the idea more subtly by exploring identity and what it means to be human, his shrewd eye capturing impulse, folly and bravado in almost every scenario he encountered.


Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023). “Martha Posner with Coat of My Lost Happiness,” 1997. Photograph © Larry Fink/MUUS Collection.

“Larry Fink is celebrated for his keen social eye,” said Peter Barberie, exhibition curator and the Brodsky curator of photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “‘Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone’ examines Fink’s photography in a different light, placing it in dialogue with Martha Posner’s art to explore themes beyond social difference. The installation at Sarasota Art Museum reveals the importance to both artists of their Pennsylvania farm. Desire and brutality emerge as elemental subjects for both of them, sometimes even bringing them out of the human and into other animal worlds. Each artist taps into universal qualities of myth to represent the drives and passions that shape human experience.”

Fink’s works have been exhibited worldwide, including presentations at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Photo Élysée (Lausanne, Switzerland), the Musée de la Photographie (Charleroi, Belgium) and a 2019 retrospective at Fotografia Europea in Italy. His photographs have been published in Vanity Fair, W, GQ, The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. He received two Guggenheim Fellowships (1976 and 1979) and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1976 and 1978). Fink taught for over 40 years, most recently at Bard College in New York.


Martha Posner (American, born 1956). “Rabbit and Wings,” 2009. Charcoal and oil stick on Arches paper, 26 x 22 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

Posner has been the subject of solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including Centro Cultural de la Cooperación (Buenos Aires), Heidi Cho Gallery (New York), the Allentown Art Museum (Allentown, Pennsylvania), the Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, Alabama) and the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland). She has received the Mary H. Dana Award from Rutgers University, the Experimental Printmaking Award from Lafayette College and fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Posner lives and works on her farm in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania.

“Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone” is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Peter Barberie, the Brodsky curator of photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The exhibition is made possible, in part, with generous support from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County and paid for in part by Sarasota County tourist development tax revenues.

MUUS Collection, which brings together American photography archives from the 20th century, will present Larry Fink’s work in an exhibition at Paris Photo, an international photography fair, from Nov. 7-10, preceding “Flesh and Bone” at Sarasota Art Museum.