Across a career that spanned some 75 years, June Leaf (1929–2024) produced an extraordinary body of work that revels in the human experience in all its banality and sublimity. Armed with indefatigable energy, an expansive, inventive mind, and a wry, closely observing eye, Leaf nimbly navigated the planes of the real and the imagined, holding a mirror up to essential truths while reminding us of our shared humanity.
Born and trained in Chicago and later relocating to New York after two formative stints in Paris, June Leaf’s career took off in 1968 with her carnivalesque, breakout exhibition Street Dreams at Allan Frumkin Gallery in New York. In the 1970s, in tandem with her part-time move to a remote fishing village in Nova Scotia, Leaf developed her signature mode of densely layered drawings and paintings, and spindly, expressive tin and wire figurative sculptures.
Perpetually rearranging both complete and in-progress works in microcosmic configurations, Leaf created a recurring cast of characters, compositions, and stories that synthesized outside influences with distinctive symbols drawn from her own rich self-mythology. Her figures wobble, jostle, climb, and spin as they engage in a timeless struggle for agency and power within metaphysical chambers-some evocative of Leaf’s studios, others of seedy bars, dollhouses, and theater stages.
Arranged thematically rather than chronologically to honor the artist’s cyclical returns to a core set of motifs, this exhibition locates Leaf in the artistic legacies of the Chicago and New York milieus to which she contributed, and acknowledges that the mythic aspects of her artistic vision ultimately cannot be contained within the standard histories of postwar and contemporary art movements. Playful and dark, ecstatic and esoteric, Leaf’s work defies categorization. In her studio everyday to weld, draw, paint, and rearrange her characters, Leaf was an epic poet of human relations and experiences.
Accompanied by a significant scholarly publication co-published by the co-organizers and Rizzoli Electa, the exhibition debuts at the Addison before traveling to the Grey Art Museum at New York University (September 9–December 13, 2025) and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College (January 27–May 24, 2026).
June Leaf: Shooting from the Heart is co-organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Major support for this project has been provided by the Estate of June Leaf with additional funding provided by The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation (formerly the Andrea 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.
Related Events
Related Exhibition materials
Press release
June Leaf will be the subject of a major traveling retrospective opening at the Addison Gallery of American Art in March 2025
Exhibition Catalogue
A full-color catalogue published by Rizzoli accompanies the exhibition and features all works on view in the exhibition as well as essays by the exhibition curators Allison Kemmerer, Gordon Wilkins, and Sam Adams, plus reflections by the artist’s peers, Joan Jonas and Kara Walker.
Installation Views
Virtual Tour
By Lightshed Photography Studio
