The Addison Gallery of American Art and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College are co-organizing a major exhibition devoted to the artist June Leaf (1929–2024), whose enigmatic, beguiling, and often irreverent work is both endlessly experimental and uncategorizable. Drawing from the artist’s vast archive along with loans from select private and institutional collections, June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart will consider the breadth of Leaf’s 75-year career. Arranged thematically, it will be the most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work in more than three decades. Leaf’s enchanting and provocative sculptures, both kinetic and stationary, paintings, and works on paper will be intermingled and placed in dynamic conversations across media, revealing the artist’s sustained engagement with such motifs and themes as theater and performance, the human drama, dance, gender, motion, urban life, mythology, and interpersonal relationships.
Accompanied by a significant scholarly publication co-published by the co-organizers and Rizzoli Electa, the exhibition will debut at the Addison before traveling to the Grey Art Museum at New York University (September 9–December 13, 2025) and the Allen (January 27–May 24, 2026).
June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart has been supported by a planning grant from the Andrea Frank Foundation. Major support for the exhibition and publication is provided by the Estate of June Leaf with additional funding provided by The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, John and Sally Van Doren (PA 1980), and the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s John H. ’29 and Marjorie Fox ’29 Wieland Current-Use AMAM Support Fund.
