Time, Truth, and Other Immeasurables opens Fri, Sep 11. Image: L, 03 49 09.7, +24 03 12, 2017. Airbrushed pigment on canvas. Collection of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Church History Museum.
Time, Truth, and Other Immeasurables opens Fri, Sep 11. Image: L, 03 49 09.7, +24 03 12, 2017. Airbrushed pigment on canvas. Collection of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Church History Museum.
June 26–September 5, 2026
Alfredo Jaar’s The End confronts the increasingly visible disappearance of the Great Salt Lake resulting from excessive water extraction. His photographs document the lake’s loss of 73% of water and 60% of surface area since the mid-nineteenth century, according to current data.
Jaar’s images offer a stark contrast between the lake’s natural beauty and its accelerating devastation, described as an “environmental nuclear bomb” by Joel Ferry, a former Utah state lawmaker and the current Commissioner of the Utah Department of Natural Resources. The lake’s decline brings dangerously high water salinity levels and exposes toxic dust containing arsenic, lead, and mercury, endangering local ecosystems and posing a serious public health risk to residents.
According to Jaar, he decided “to print these images in a small, unspectacular format, as a kind of visual whisper, a lament for our dying planet”.
Supported by Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, George S. & Dolores D. Eccles Foundation, Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts & Parks Program, Salt Lake Arts Council, Giving Mangos
Alfredo Jaar is an artist, photographer, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in Lisbon. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010, 2021) as well as Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002).
Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1992); Whitechapel, London (1992); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1994); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1995); and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2005). Major recent surveys of his work have taken place at Musée des Beaux Arts, Lausanne (2007); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2008); Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie and Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V., Berlin (2012); Rencontres d’Arles (2013); KIASMA, Helsinki (2014); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2017); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2020); SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima (2023), and KINDL, Berlin (2024).
The artist has realized more than seventy public interventions around the world. Over eighty monographic publications have been published about his work. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020. In 2024 he was awarded the IV Albert Camus Mediterranean Prize. In 2025 he was selected as the recipient of the Edward MacDowell Medal and received the 11th Prix Pictet.
His work can be found in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MOCA and LACMA, Los Angeles; MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo; TATE, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centro Reina Sofia, Madrid; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MAXXI and MACRO, Rome; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlaebeck; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art and Tokushima Modern Art Museum, Japan; M+, Hong Kong; and dozens of institutions and private collections worldwide.
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