Darren Waterston: Filthy Lucre
Opens May 2027
Museum of Arts and Design, New York
Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre is an immersive installation that reimagines James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s famed Peacock Room. Waterston has faithfully recreated each of the room’s individual elements with a twist, with the installation revealing a magnificent ruin crumbling under the weight of material decadence and the egos of those involved in its creation.
Replicating almost every detail of Whistler’s masterpiece, Waterston transforms the room into an uneasy experience of destruction and twisted excess, drawing parallels between the economic inequality of the Victorian era and today. Created through extensive collaboration, Filthy Lucre demonstrates master craftsmanship to reimagine the luxurious wood panelling, ornate lighting pendants and stunning ceramics collection, as well as decorative wall art and a captivating central portrait that draws viewers into the room. A soundscape by New York-based rockers BETTY also enhances the installation experience, filling the space with muffled gossiping voices and a mournful cello.
The Drawing Room
June 13 - September 26, 2027
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX
In conjunction with the exhibition Cecilia Beaux: Gilded Angst is The Drawing Room. A newly commissioned immersive installation that explores the undercurrents of Beaux’s work, inviting visitors to experience the simultaneous beauty, splendor, and unease of the Gilded Age.
The Congregation of Tears
For well over a decade, I have been working to create a contemplative sanctuary as an immersive, multimedia work of art, building on my experience of creating Filthy Lucre at MassMoCA (later exhibited at the Smithsonian’s Freer-Sackler Gallery and at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London), but also taking inspiration from the existing artists’ chapels, such as the Portiuncula of Saint Francis in Assisi or Rothko’s chapel at The Menil in Houston.
For me, this project is not only an effort to immerse visitors in multi-dimensional aesthetic experience informed by history and shaped by collaboration with fellow artists I love, but also an attempt to create opportunities for all of us to slow down, get quiet, and contemplate how artists throughout time have reflected on the emotive capacity that is fundamental to human experience, and therefore transcends our differences. In this way, I see The Congregation of Tears as not just a timely work of art, but as a necessary intervention in a world we are all now struggling to understand and take part in.
Over the coming months we will be fundraising, starting fabrication trials, sourcing additional artisans, and securing our institutional partners for the exhibition. Construction of The Congregation of Tears, along with the coordination of the work’s other multi-dimensional elements, will wrap up in 2026, with exhibitions anticipated for 2027-2028.