The National Academy of Design presents Exercises in Imagination, the induction exhibition of recent work by seventeen National Academicians who were elected to the National Academy of Design in the fall of 2022. With a focus on the myriad of potential that their practices create, Exercises in Imagination is poised to frame a dialogue between art, architecture, and emerging disciplines, which are at the heart of the National Academy’s founding. Works in the exhibition collectively envision realms that move between shared histories and speculative futures.

Elected by the artist and architect members of the National Academy, the induction of this group of artists and architects last October follows a tradition that dates to 1825, when the first class of new Academicians was elected by founding artists and architects. The election process ensures that the Academy’s membership represents the range of practices and sensibilities that define contemporary cultural production in the United States.

The Class of 2022 National Academicians includes Laurie Anderson, Edgar Arceneaux, Radcliffe Bailey, Deborah Berke, Huma Bhabha, Tania Bruguera, J. Yolande Daniels, Leonardo Drew, Nicole Eisenman, Julie Eizenberg, Hank Koning, Rick Lowe, Jean Shin, Arthur Simms, Michael Van Valkenburgh, Dan Walsh, and Nari Ward.

The works in the exhibition challenge accepted notions of U.S. history, collectively envisioning realms that move between shared histories and speculative futures. Exercises in Imagination is a complex reading of imagination’s potential in American contemporary culture, reflecting diverse lived experiences within the U.S. A notable thread in the show is the variety of ways artists and architects harness memory and history to reshape real built and social environments, as well as the fantastical imaginings and abstractions artists and architects utilize to envision a multiplicity of cultural outcomes. Experimentation as an act of survival, growth, and regeneration unites the Academicians in a collective urgency for solutions to the problems marking our existence today.