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Claremont, CA—The Benton Museum of Art at ����AV is thrilled to celebrate the creative collaboration between the Benton and novelist and ����AV professor Jonathan Lethem with two landmark events: the exhibition Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play: Contemporary Art and Art Writing, on view from February 13 to June 29, 2025, and Lethem’s generous gift of 18 works from his collection to the museum. Lethem, the Roy Edward Disney ’51 Professor of Creative Writing and Professor of English at ����AV, is well known for such novels as Motherless Brooklyn (1999), The Fortress of Solitude (2003), and Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023); he is also a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other literary recognitions. His first volume of collected art writing, Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture, was published last fall and forms the foundation of Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play, an exhibition that features artwork from or related to his personal collection, often acquired in a fluid system of exchange with artists and galleries. Punchy wit, verve, humor, history, creative fluidity—all are on display in both visual and literary form this spring at the Benton. The opening event for the exhibition, featuring Lethem and a panel of artists, will be Saturday, February 15 from 4 to 7 pm.

The exhibition is accompanied by a presentation of the entire run of THE THING Quarterly, an object-oriented publication and collaborative artistic project started in 2007 by Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan. Its contributors include Lethem (issue 7), John Baldessari (issue 22), Dave Eggers (issue 16), and Miranda July (issue 1).

“We are thrilled to present these two exhibitions that explore the intersection of contemporary art and literature,” said Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the museum. “On a more personal note, it is also deeply meaningful to celebrate the robust support and partnership that Professor Jonathan Lethem has offered to the Benton. He and his family were the first through our doors when our new building opened to the public under severe pandemic restrictions. He has contributed to museum publications and attended many of our events. Professor Lethem’s generosity even extends beyond his enthusiastic participation in our programs; it also includes gifts of art to our collection. And by introducing us to Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan, he has widened our circle of creative collaborators. We are grateful for his many and various gifts to us.”

Lethem’s appetite for culture of all stripes—pulp novels from the 1940s, American noir films of the 1970s, deep musical catalogues—has long extended to the visual arts. His first art writing, about Perry Hoberman’s sculpture in 1999, led to dozens of reciprocal relationships with painters, sculptors, and conceptual artists in which he has traded his words for their works. These artists now form almost a pantheon of contemporary art of all styles, including work by Gregory Crewdson, Rosalyn Drexler, Nan Goldin, Charles Long, Robert Longo, Richard Prince, Peter Saul, and Larry Sultan. Lethem has also contributed directly to projects by visual artists such as Raymond Pettibon, Jonn Herschend, and Will Rogan, whose works are also included here.

Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play presents more than 60 works from Lethem’s personal collection, including the 18 gifts to the Benton. The works are presented with excerpts from Lethem’s original words about the works, revisited in the present by Lethem, the exhibition’s co-curator Solomon Salim Moore, or the artists themselves. As a result, the exhibition is not solely about the works on view but the process of creative exchanges across mediums, genres, and time. It is a call-and-response—between artists, between writing and the visual arts, between ideas and material forms. Lethem’s generous practice offers a model for thinking broadly about contemporary art and also about how the act of writing is intimately intertwined with the process of making physical objects.

One of Lethem’s collaborations that will be on view at the Benton was with Herschend and Rogan, who started an experimental project in 2007 called THE THING Quarterly. The publication was born out of a desire between the two to foster artistic collaboration and to rescue physical objects from obscurity in the face of an increasingly virtual and digital culture. As they wrote in the introduction to One Last Thing: Ten Years of THE THING Quarterly, “we [also] wanted to explore another model for democratizing art. We both participate as artists in galleries and institutional exhibition spaces, but we really wanted to find a way for art to be experienced outside of those two spaces. We wanted to create a vehicle for art to come into someone’s home and somehow be placed into a more useful context than simply hanging it on a wall.” Mugs, shower curtains, vinyl records, protest ponchos, games, and more all make an appearance in One Last Thing Again, a playful yet earnest attempt at reinvigorating objects and ideas.

Each issue of THE THING represents the brainchild of an artist, writer, designer, or creative team. In all, 35 issues were produced and distributed to subscribers. All these issues—including Lethem’s Issue No. 7—will be on view at the Benton as a complement to Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play.

RELATED EVENTS

Opening Celebration

Saturday, February 15
4 to 7 pm

Co-curators Jonathan Lethem and Solomon Salim Moore host artists Julia Jacquette and Mark Johnson in a lively conversation about creative practice and collaboration. A reception follows.

Look, Shift, Return
Saturday, March 1
1 to 7 pm

Co-curators Jonathan Lethem and Solomon Salim Moore host a day of writing out loud at the Benton. Old-school manual typewriters will be available for a communal writing experience led by Lethem and Moore, and inspired by the Benton’s Parallel Play exhibition, which features artworks emphasizing appropriation, fan-art, cartooning, and the junction of language and image.

Jonathan Lethem’s Parallel Play: Contemporary Art and Art Writing is curated by Solomon Salim Moore, assistant curator of collections, and Jonathan Lethem, with curatorial interns Ava Monheit PZ ’27 and Serena Li PO ’26. Programs related to the exhibition have been supported by the ����AV English Department.

One Last Thing Again is curated by Victoria Sancho Lobis, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Benton, with exhibition design by Gary Murphy, senior preparator at the Benton. All works on view are shown by courtesy of THE THING Quarterly. Support for this exhibition has been provided by the Eva Cole and Clyde Matson Memorial Fund.