Rashid Johnson’s Muse? An Entire Historical Canon

The artist Rashid Johnson doesn’t have just one muse. It makes sense, considering the Chicago native works across media, from painting and sculpture to photography and filmmaking. “My practice is what I call post-medium,” says the 48-year-old, who’s calling from his studio in New York. Further proof: the night before our interview, he directed an adaptation of the play Dutchman at the Cherry Lane Theater, in the West Village.

His enduring muses are “the Black intellectual landscape and Black thinkers.” These are the subjects of his newest solo exhibition, A Poem for Deep Thinkers, which is up at The Guggenheim through January 19, 2026. (On December 9, the museum honored Johnson at the annual Guggenheim Gala). “Whether it’s W.E.B. DuBois or Harold Cruse or Toni Morrison, that collective group serves as muses for how I see myself moving forward in my ambitious attempt to contribute to a canonically relevant Black history.” They “give me purpose, they give me energy, they give me something to bounce off of.”

A number of historical giants show up in A Poem for Deep Thinkers, which features almost 90 works made over Johnson’s 30-year career. Take, for instance, the octagonal “Untitled Microphone Sculpture” (2018), a piece that includes stacks of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, a book of essays examining Black Americans’ fight for equal rights. Oftentimes, Johnson’s titles reference the muse for a particular piece—like “Me Lying on Jack Johnson’s Grave” (2006), a self-portrait that considers the impact of the first Black heavyweight boxing champion. “There’s also ‘Self-Portrait With My Hair Parted Like Frederick Douglass,’” Johnson adds. “In that work, I’m thinking really clearly about him, the abolitionist and the activist, and how one would go about the process of inheriting his brilliance through the absurd gesture of mimicking his hairstyle.”

There aren’t just 19th- and 20th-century thinkers woven throughout the exhibition. The astrophysicist and writer Neil deGrasse Tyson inspired “Death by Black Hole, the Crisis,” a sculpture made using 60 copies of Tyson’s 2007 book of essays. Tyson’s work, also titled “Death by Black Hole,” is “this really brilliant exploration of the infinite consumption and ambition Black Holes have.” Johnson sees him as “a genius in science—a space in which we don’t usually imagine Black contributors as being high-functioning.”

“I’m never starting with a blank canvas,” says Johnson. “I feel so satiated by all of the things that I’ve had the privilege of consuming. So the canvas is already full—I’m just tasked with organizing it.”