Marilyn Minter (2023) was the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York since her acclaimed retrospective Pretty/Dirty at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2016–17). The exhibition showcased vibrant paintings alongside sculpture, video, photography, and prints. Spanning three floors and six gallery spaces, Marilyn Minter embodied the artist’s daring exploration of beauty, representation, autonomy, and desire from a feminist and sex-positive perspective.

Notably, the exhibition debuted Minter’s portraiture. For centuries, portraits have been the mainstay of the elite. Most portraits that grace the walls of museums, boardrooms, and private homes perpetuate a view of history as remarkable for its absences as for its role in shaping mainstream political and civic discourse. Minter charged into this history, selecting subjects who have made impactful shifts in the cultural landscape. Previously, Minter worked with models whose physical attributes—from freckles to body hair—celebrate unique forms of beauty and reassess what is often overlooked or erased from contemporary, glamorous imagery. In this inaugural group of painted portraits, Minter selected her subjects to include artists, social commentators, activists, and performers she admires, each of whom have contributed to cultural conversations around feminism, race, and gender politics. These celebrated icons include Roxane Gay, Monica Lewinsky, Mickalene Thomas, Gloria Steinem, Glenn Ligon, and Lady Gaga.

In addition to paintings and photographs, the exhibition featured a series of new multimedia sculptures including Thirsty (Drinking Fountain) (2023). Custom-made from stainless steel, these drinking fountains housed Minter’s recent video Thirsty (2022) in their cloudlike resin basins, where closely cropped lips and tongues manipulate glitter and pearls along with spit, hair, and grime. Thirsty (Drinking Fountain) married functionality with design to create a sculpture that is operational, interactive, and otherworldly. Surrounding these sculptures were works that elaborated on the themes suggested in Thirsty, including the monumental painting Word of Mouth (2020–22) and a new silkscreen print Hush (2023).