Bob Dylan’s Artwork to Be Exhibited for the First Time in U.S.

Florida International University has announced that it’ll be hosting the first-ever exhibit of Bob Dylan’s visual artwork in the U.S. this fall.

Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum, opening November 30th at the university’s Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, will feature more than 120 of Dylan’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures spanning six decades. The exhibit will be on view through April 17th, 2022.

During the exhibit’s opening week, the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL), FIU’s humanities and arts hub, will present DYLAN@FIU, a symposium exploring Bob Dylan’s career and cultural influence, timed to coincide with Miami Art Week.

Dylan’s first exhibition of artwork was The Drawn Blank Series, unveiled at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany in 2007. Retrospectrum was initially conceived for the Modern Art Museum (MAM) in Shanghai, China, where it first opened in 2019.

“Bob Dylan is a seminal artist, rightly recognized as one of the defining figures of popular culture for more than half a century,” Shai Baitel, the artistic director of Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai, said in a statement. “We saw the profound impact and reach of Dylan’s work in Shanghai, where hundreds of thousands came to experience and engage with his remarkable creativity, unique observations, and social commentary.”

FIU president Mark B. Rosenberg added: “When I saw the catalogue representing the beautiful and comprehensive Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum exhibition that premiered in Shanghai in 2019, I knew immediately that I wanted to bring this iconic artist’s rarely seen visual works to South Florida, to be enjoyed by our students, our broader community and visitors from across the country and around the globe.”