Jan, 28, 2026
Media AlertsModern and Contemporary Art
Phoenix Art Museum hosts nationally acclaimed artist Caroline Kent for spring Lenhardt Lecture
PHOENIX (January 28, 2026) – This March, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) will present its spring Lenhardt Lecture featuring renowned artist Caroline Kent. Tickets to the Lenhardt Lecture on March 25 at 6:30 pm are free for Museum Members and $5 for the public. They are available here.
“We are pleased to welcome Caroline Kent this March as part of our ongoing Lenhardt Lecture series, made possible through the generosity of the Lenhardt family,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Through her exploration of language and abstraction, Kent helps redefine what it means to communicate in a global society. Her practice challenges us to see beyond what’s familiar to us, inspiring dialogue and transformation. The spring Lenhardt Lecture is a rare opportunity to hear firsthand how art can challenge boundaries and allows visitors to gain insight into Kent’s process and vision.”
Kent, an associate professor in the Art, Theory, and Practice department at Northwestern University, was born in Sterling, Illinois in 1975, earning a Bachelor of Arts from Illinois State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota. From 2000 to 2002, she lived in Alba Iulia, Romania, as a Peace Corps volunteer. Kent’s work explores the limits of language and the process of translation through an expanded painting practice. Developed through an open-ended archive of improvisational works on paper, her paintings built from this context take multiple forms, including drawings, sculpture, and performance. She labors to expand the discourse of modernist abstraction by questioning how language operates in unknown and ever-evolving conditions. Her work moves from surface and frame to environment and architecture through acts of translation from one medium to the next.
Over the past few years, Kent’s practice has evolved into a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, a total art form, articulating space, matter, and time through architecture, objects, and performance. Past exhibitions have included movement-based troupes and dancers who built choreography from the forms of specific artworks, becoming full-space installations. Wooden shapes extend beyond the paintings, cornices and walls bend to buttress portals, and the vocabulary of forms has begun to produce a choreography for bodies navigating these new worlds. The production of objects has shifted from a conflation of perception tied to a particular time and place to an unfolding universe of becoming. Bringing forms from within the painting to the outside is a simultaneous act of translation and transformation. Kent’s work suggests that an abstract language beckons a context that speaks to other material and immaterial forms in the world.
“Dawn and I are so pleased to welcome Caroline Kent as this spring’s Lenhardt Lecture speaker,” said David Lenhardt, vice chair of the Museum’s Board of Trustees. “Kent’s work makes us consider ways to think differently and connect more deeply. We believe that her voice will inspire attendees to see the power of creativity in building bridges and broadening communication.
In addition to her presentation at Phoenix Art Museum, Kent will visit with students, local artists and creatives to provide mentorship. This educational and community-based work is another component of the Lenhardt Lectures and enables lecture speakers to give back and engage with Arizona-based creatives in various capacities.
For more information about the Lenhardt Lecture series or for high-resolution images, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at press@phxart.org.
About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, a monthly live-music series, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.
About the David and Dawn Lenhardt Lecture and the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative
The David and Dawn Lenhardt Lecture engages Valley audiences with some of the most acclaimed contemporary artists in the world. In 2018, the inaugural lecture presented New-York based artist Jim Hodges, and subsequent lectures have featured artists Shara Hughes, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Arcmanoro Niles, Teresita Fernández in conversation with Amalia Mesa-Bains, Derek Fordjour, Rashid Johnson, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe in conversation with Larry Ossei-Mensah, Leonardo Drew, Charles Gaines in conversation with Thelma Golden and Adam Pendelton in conversation with Dr. Adrienne Edwards.
The Lenhardt Lecture is a key component of the David and Dawn Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative. Made possible through the generosity of the Arizona-based Lenhardt family, the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative was established in 2017 to deepen the Museum’s commitment to contemporary art through various programs, namely the Lenhardt Lectures, which engage Valley audiences with some of the most acclaimed contemporary artists in the world; the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund, which enables Phoenix Art Museum to collect works by contemporary artists; and the Dawn and David Lenhardt Gallery, designated for the presentation of contemporary art, including works acquired with funds from the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative, loans from national and local collectors, and a rotating series of artworks from the Lenhardts’ own collection. In 2021, the initiative was expanded to support the diversification of the contemporary art collection of Phoenix Art Museum through the acquisition of works by artists contributing to discourses on race, gender, and other socially relevant concerns, including those by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and women artists, among others. Since 2017, the Museum has acquired artworks by Shara Hughes, Arcmanoro Niles, Derek Fordjour, Rashid Johnson, and Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe with funds from the Lenhardt Contemporary Art Initiative.
About Caroline Kent
Caroline Kent, an associate professor in the Art, Theory, and Practice department at Northwestern University, was born in Sterling, Illinois in 1975, earning a Bachelor of Arts from Illinois State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota. From 2000 to 2002, she lived in Alba Iulia, Romania, as a Peace Corps volunteer. Kent’s work explores the limits of language and the process of translation through an expanded painting practice. Developed through an open-ended archive of improvisational works on paper, her paintings built from this context take multiple forms, including drawings, sculpture, and performance. She labors to expand the discourse of modernist abstraction by questioning how language operates in unknown and ever-evolving conditions. Her work moves from surface and frame to environment and architecture through acts of translation from one medium to the next.
A 2025 USA Fellow and recipient of the Aspen Arts Prize for innovation in painting, Kent has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, and Jerome Foundation. Additionally, she was a 2020 Artadia Chicago Awardee and a 2021 Joyce Alexander Wein Prize recipient from the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her recent exhibitions include La Trienal at El Museo del Barrio, New York City and Ancestral at the Museum of Brazilian Art (M.A.B.), São Paulo, Brazil. Kent has showcased her work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, MCA Chicago, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Hill Art Foundation, BAMPFA, the Queens Museum, and the Walker Art Center.
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