The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami has opened "Richard Hunt: Pressure," the largest survey to date of American sculptor Richard Hunt (1935-2023), focusing on his work from 1955 to 1989. The exhibition traces Hunt's evolution from self-taught welder at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to a master of welded steel, featuring early pieces like *Telescopic Construction* (1955) and *Hero's Head* (1956), the latter created after attending Emmett Till's open-casket funeral. Co-curated by Gean Moreno and Alex Gartenfeld, the show highlights Hunt's negotiation between formal innovation and social awareness, with works that balance beauty and brutality.
The exhibition coincides with growing institutional interest in Hunt, including recent solo shows at White Cube in New York and London, and his upcoming commission *Book Bird* for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Hunt's practice, rooted in the Civil Rights Movement and industrial materials, offers a singular model of how abstraction can carry profound social and political weight without becoming literal. The show matters because it reclaims Hunt's place in the canon of 20th-century American sculpture, demonstrating his influence on conversations about race, materiality, and transcendence in art.