SEATTLE, WA.- “Every Picture Somewhat of an Experiment”: Helen Frankenthaler Prints
July 5, 2026 - April 25, 2027

By the age of thirty-two, Helen Frankenthaler (1928—2011) had established herself in a white male-dominated art world as one of the leading American Abstract Expressionist painters of the twentieth century. Her distinctive “soak-stain” technique—applying thinned paint onto unprimed canvases on the floor to produce watercolor-like effects—introduced chance as an integral part of her artistic process. Printmaking, a technical process involving chemistry, collaboration, and repetition, might appear at odds with the spontaneity and physicality of her painting.

Beginning in 1961 through the 2000s, Frankenthaler made more than three hundred print editions, experimenting with etching, lithography, silkscreen, woodcut, and more. In collaboration with workshops including Universal Limited Art Editions, 2RC, Tyler Graphics, Ediciones Pol�grafa, and Garner Tullis—each represented in this exhibition—she translated her painterly concerns into print, in her words, “with new materials.” Over the course of her decades-long explorations in print, she distinguished herself not only as one of the few Abstract Expressionists to deeply engage the print medium, but also as an artist who innovated across painting and printmaking, pushing both in new directions.

In 2023, the Henry received a transformative gift of prints and proofs through the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Prints Initiative. Now on view at the Henry for the first time, these works trace the arc of Frankenthaler’s print career from early experiments to later technical innovations. Collectively, they highlight the collaborative ethos of printmaking as a creative practice while revealing how Frankenthaler reimagined the possibilities of both mediums to forge new dialogues.

Two recent works by Analia Saban (b. 1980, Buenos Aires; lives and works in Los Angeles) extend Frankenthaler’s experiments into the present. Saban’s multidisciplinary practice explores how emerging technologies relate to traditional histories of art, sharing with Frankenthaler’s work a commitment to materiality, abstraction, and reconfiguring what a painting—or a print—is.





Day-to-Day: Rhythm, Routine, Resistance
July 11, 2026 – January 3, 2027

This exhibition brings together contemporary artworks across media that explore the poetics and politics of everyday life. Using the day-to-day as both material and subject, these works explore how the ordinary and seemingly incidental can become a powerful source for artistic inquiry, critical reflection, and imagination.

From Rashid Johnson’s film chronicle of his family’s day-to-day routines to Dawn Clements’ monumental drawing of her temporary living space and Tony Feher’s delicate, hanging mass of disposable plastic bottles, artworks in the exhibition reveal the contradictions of daily life—feelings of belonging and alienation, and the tension between permanence and transience.

Most of the works were made within the last thirty years by a diverse group of U.S.-based artists. They show how personal experience is intertwined with larger social, economic, and historical realities. Everyday rituals and routines, common objects, and private spaces become sites for reflection on—and resistance to—these larger structural forces that shape who and what society values, from gendered and racialized labor to the built environment and design.

The exhibition draws primarily from the Henry’s permanent collection, alongside several works borrowed from private collections in the region. Together the artworks in Day-to-Day trace individual and shared narratives of survival and joy, inviting us to contemplate the transformative power of everyday materials and acts of living.

Featured Artists: Mary L. Bennett, Nayland Blake, Andrea Bowers, Dawn Clements, Jason Dodge, Tara Donovan, Tony Feher, Eve Fowler, Genevieve Gaignard, Ellen Garvens, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Jenny Holzer, Rashid Johnson, Isaac Layman, Laura Letinsky, Liz Magor, Larry Mantello, Leslie Martinez, Park McArthur, Louise Nevelson, Ruben Ochoa, Liliana Porter, Amanda Ross-Ho, Mickalene Thomas, Dan Webb

Joiri Minaya: To Hell With Hibiscus
July 25, 2026 - May 2, 2027

Joiri Minaya (b. 1990, New York City; raised in the Dominican Republic) is a multidisciplinary artist who examines the Tropics as a constructed place and identity. As both performer and saboteur, Minaya challenges misrepresentations that reduce tropical geographies and their inhabitants to imagined fantasies of the colonial imagination. In her work, she reclaims Afro-Indigenous narratives of resistance, ancestral knowledges, and regenerative practices—especially those rooted in plant and botanical traditions.

The exhibition at the Henry showcases the versatile language of textiles that Minaya has developed to critique the making of a global Tropics—a fabricated realm for the “exotic” extending from the Caribbean to the Pacific. From her storied Aloha shirts to the floral spandex cloths she designed to cloak colonial monuments, the works on view will weave new myths and cannibalize worn stereotypes, using Seattle as a touchpoint to imagine shared histories that connect across the Global South.

Engaging the scale and openness of the double-height gallery at the Henry, the exhibition plays with concealment and revelation, inviting visitors to think expansively about the Tropical, and consider art’s role in challenging the grand narratives that shape our understandings of place and culture.