Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen?

In his paintings, drawings, and other works, the artist Adam Pendleton calls on a broad range of artistic and cultural currents—including Dada, Minimalism, and Black Power—to explore the ways in which context influences meaning. Through his reconfigurations of words, forms, and images, he questions long-accepted historical narratives about representation and abstraction.

Published to accompany the installation ‘Who Is Queen?’ at The Museum of Modern Art, this reader serves as a primer and a handbook. It includes photocopies of texts that have been critical in Pendleton’s practice, with the work of such disparate figures as Glenn Gould, Michael Hardt, and Ruby Sales, alongside images of Resurrection City and Pendleton’s own drawings. The texts pick up and elaborate on the exhibition’s themes: the idea of the museum as a repository for meaning and the influence that mass movements can have on the exhibition as form.