“Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith, on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 4, 2023, through January 28, 2024, is the first solo exhibition of artist, filmmaker, musicologist, collector, and radical nonconformist Harry Smith (1923–1991). Best known for his compendium of song recordings, the Anthology of American Folk Music, Smith helped establish the popularization of folk music in the 1960s. This major exhibition introduces Smith’s life and work within a museum setting for the first time through paintings, drawings, designs, experimental films, sound recordings, and examples of Smith’s collecting. Designed in partnership with artist Carol Bove, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten proposes new ways of experiencing twentieth-century American cultural histories.” — Whitney Museum of American Art

Installation views of Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith at Whitney Museum of American Art, October 4, 2023 – January 28, 2024. Photos by Corrado Serra.

“At the Whitney, we strive to create exhibitions that are as innovative as the artists they present,” said Scott Rothkopf, Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator and incoming Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum. “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten is one such show, bringing to life the visionary world of Harry Smith as a total installation brilliantly conceived by the artist Carol Bove.”

“Vitally, Harry Smith brought to light and wrestled with—sometimes imperfectly—facets of America’s rich histories, tracing and sharing underappreciated veins of culture often invisible to mainstream society,” said Elisabeth Sussman, Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. “Smith followed his own path through American culture, revealing more about this country, its arts, and its diverse creative communities than nearly any other artist of his time.”