Sheila Hicks’s Luminous Fiber Installations

For nearly seven decades, Sheila Hicks has redefined contemporary art through groundbreaking works that push the expressive possibilities of fiber as a sculptural medium. Untethered to the confines of a loom, she creates at varying scales, twisting, wrapping, braiding, knotting, and coiling threads that frequently veer into space or are integrated into monumental architectural settings. Endlessly curious, she pursues “how to make materials do what they want to do, but my way.”

For SFMOMA’s New Work exhibition, Hicks, who was born in Nebraska and has worked from Paris since 1964, draws inspiration from places with personal significance, from the cobblestones of her courtyard to the towering lighthouses surrounding the rocky island of Ouessant, France, with its treacherous, rugged landscape.

In the gallery, her works respond to forms, structures, and colors observed in her adopted city or in her migratory life. A constellation of the artist’s circular boules radiate as luminous beacons. Their vivid spectrum of layered surfaces entwined with crisscrossing lines conjure topographical terrains, cosmological maps, or the prismatic lenses of searchlights. A selection of minimes, intimate compositions woven on handheld frames, highlight daily explorations of construction techniques, textures, and color, which Hicks studied under Bauhaus artist Josef Albers at Yale. Each is a unique, often playful inquiry into the behaviors of materials and form. Her recent bas reliefs chart new territory in panels wrapped double-sided with lines of linen threads.

Glacier-shaped formations stitched on the diagonal enliven the plane with floating spaces and contrasting colors. Anchoring the gallery is a soaring phare (French for lighthouse) whose twisted, vibrantly pigmented ropes open new horizons. Reconfigured installations of the artist’s signature wrapped bâtons, and massive mounds of fiber in vibrant colors show how Hicks’s works continually evolve in a process she describes as “walking the tightrope into the future.”

An expansive outdoor commission in the museum’s Jean and James Douglas Family Sculpture Garden extends the gallery presentation, bringing surprising discoveries with changes in light and weather.

New Work: Sheila Hicks is on view August 9, 2025, through August 9, 2026, on Floor 4.

Lead support for New Work: Sheila Hicks is provided by Penny S. and James G. Coulter and Randi and Bob Fisher.

Significant support is provided by Robin Wright and Ian Reeves.

Meaningful support is provided by Alka and Ravin Agrawal, Dolly and George

Chammas, Jonathan Gans and Abigail Turin, and Adriane Iann and Christian Stolz.

Since 1987, SFMOMA’s New Work series has provided a platform for artists to experiment with a new idea or body of work. The series focuses on the innovative visions of living artists and has played a key role in shaping the breadth and character of the museum’s collection and programming.