Wonder Working Power, a site-specific installation by the Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and professor reflects the artist’s upbringing as well as his embrace of the genre of ceramics and the use of clay as a transformative material that embodies myriad elements.   

Multiple works are arranged on and around a steel plinth. Their presence exudes power as they occupy the spaces upon and around the altar-like structure. Gates invites viewers to come forward to experience the power of his handiwork and embrace the traditions of the divine. 

This installation will close March 2, 2025. Gate’s work, Glass Lantern Slide Pavilion, is also included in the permanent collection of Modern & Contemporary art. 

In 2019, VMFA commissioned Odili Donald Odita to create a work inspired by the collection. Odita is best known for his colorful acrylic abstract painting of slightly irregular and off-kilter geometric forms. Odita’s dual identity, being born in Nigeria and raised in the American Midwest, is reflected in his works. His paintings are rooted in the modernist tradition of geometric abstraction and point out the double inheritance of western and African abstraction. Procession is the visual response to the museum’s extraordinary holdings that includes the work of artists of the African American South, contemporary masters, and midcentury avant garde painters. Proceeding in the same vein as Sol LeWitt, whose Wall Drawing #541 graces the museum’s 20th-century gallery entrance from the Marble Hall, Odita executed a work that also responds to the specificity of space, creating a dynamic play upon the Atrium’s architecture. 

Watch the installation of Odita’s work in this video. 

“My work is in conversation with history.” —Jennie C. Jones 

This immersive installation at VMFA features two sound works. The first composition, High as the Listening Skies, features three gospel choirs from Houston, Los Angeles, and Baltimore, performing the song “A City Called Heaven.” The song was popularized by gospel icon and civil rights activist Mahalia Jackson. The second featured work, The Edges of Heaven, Rest, is primarily tonal and associated with the concept of music as having healing energy. Jones layers audio samples—effectively collaging composition from Black composer Alvin Singleton. 

The two works, which can be experienced together in the chapel located in the museum’s Sculpture Garden, create a striking balance between the crescendo of a spiritual ecstatic and a meditative calm. Interwoven, they emit a sonic framing that bridges the physical world to the ethereal realm, offering the transcendent and transformational possibilities of sound.