WILMINGTON, DE.- The Delaware Art Museum will present Lisa Bradley: Beyond Luminosity, on view from September 19, 2026 through January 17, 2027. Organized by DelArt Head Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art Margaret Winslow and Art Bridges Fellow Hilda Delgado, this inspiring exhibition will introduce audiences to Bradley’s most recent body of work, on view for the first time in Beyond Luminosity.
Lisa Bradley translates the mysterious into the physical with intimate marks and sweeping gestures. As an artist working within the field of abstraction, Bradley has contributed to its evolving history. Eminent art historian Carter Ratcliff describes her work as depicting “a pause between the pulses of some vast and luminous energy.” Her career is one that has endured beyond trends and common tropes, representing a breakthrough in the field of abstract painting. Bradley’s work is informed by a strong interest in spiritual experience. In her luminous paintings, she achieves an expression of simultaneous movement and stillness, creating a feeling of suspended time.
“Bradley offers her India ink drawings and radiant oil paintings for our discovery,” said Winslow. “We are rewarded with each encounter, suspended in a luminous field of color.”
Featuring 10 large-scale paintings and eight works on paper, the exhibition is the Delaware Art Museum’s first solo presentation of Bradley’s work. Her painting, Akasa II (also on view), was welcomed into the collection in 2009. Over the past 15 years, the painting has been a regular fixture in the Museum’s galleries, captivating visitors of all ages and becoming a beloved piece in the contemporary collection.
The artist explains, “There is a certain nature that is neither life nor death, indivisible, something we all know yet don’t know… that part of me that knows, paints.” Bradley’s works encourage viewers to pause and dwell in their mystery, finding meaning in moments of quiet reflection. Bradley was born in Columbus, Ohio, and received her undergraduate degree from Boston University in 1973. Bradley acknowledges gallery owner and artist Betty Parsons and collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel as important champions in her early career. Her paintings have been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. Bradley’s work is included in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, New Orleans Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum, among many others.
A complementary 120-page monograph—available in the Museum store, Market at DelArt—features insights from prominent curators, critics, and art historians including Ronny Cohen, Eleanor Heartney, Townsend Ludington, Carter Ratcliff, and John Yau.
Reflecting the exhibition’s contemplative themes, the fall programming around the exhibition—including Transcendent: Landscapes of the Hudson River School organized by The New York Historical—offers moments of respite, creating opportunities to pause, reconnect, and make space for stillness amid the pace of everyday life.
