Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love

A richly illustrated account tracing the full arc of contemporary painter Suzanne Jackson’s life and multifaceted artistic vision

First and foremost a painter, Suzanne Jackson has worked for six decades in a dizzying array of genres, including drawing, printmaking, poetry, dance, and theater design. Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love reveals Jackson’s achievements as a leading and influential artist who has been in dialogue with her contemporaries, from Betye Saar and Emory Douglas to Senga Nengudi and Mary Lovelace O’Neal.

This wide-ranging book illuminates Jackson’s work and its connections to nature, environmentalism, performance, feminism, and Black and Native traditions. It explores the way her innovative hanging acrylic works break the canvas; the role of dance and set design in Jackson’s practice; and her trailblazing Los Angeles art space Gallery 32, which she ran from 1968 to 1970, and which became a focus for a circle of fellow emerging artists. The book also features artist dialogues between Jackson and Nengudi, Saar, Fred Eversley, and Richard Mayhew, as well as a conversation between Jackson and SFMOMA painting conservator Jennifer Hickey.

Exhibition Schedule
SFMOMA, San Francisco
September 27, 2025-March 1, 2026

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
May 14, 2026-August 23, 2026

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
September 26, 2026-February 7, 2027

Jenny Gheith is associate curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Taylor Jasper is assistant curator of visual arts at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Kellie Jones is chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department and the Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Paulina Pobocha is the Robert Soros Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Taylor Renee Aldridge is a writer and independent curator based in Los Angeles. Tiffany E. Barber is assistant professor of African American Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as curator-in-residence at the Delaware Contemporary. Molly Garfinkel is the codirector of City Lore. Jodi Waynberg is the executive director of Artists Alliance. Meredith George Van Dyke is an independent researcher and writer based in Houston.