Nick Cave monumental ‘Mammoth’ at Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum will debut “Nick Cave: Mammoth,” a monumental new body of work by internationally acclaimed artist Nick Cave, on February 13, 2026. Commissioned by the museum, “Mammoth” marks Cave’s first solo exhibition in Washington, D.C. and represents the museum’s largest-ever commission by a single artist.

“Mammoth” is Cave’s most personal project to date. Drawing on his childhood in Chariton County, Missouri—where his grandparents farmed and where the quilts, tools and clothing they made were a part of everyday life—Cave roots this installation in family history, landscapes and craft traditions. He transforms these sources into a world animated by memory and the transformative possibilities of the imagination.

Combining sculpture, video and found objects, the exhibition reflects on the artist’s own creative impulse and invites audiences to consider their relationship to the natural world and the everyday objects and histories that shape our lives.  

“Nick Cave: Mammoth” will be on view free of charge at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through Jan. 3, 2027. The exhibition is organized by Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art, with support from Anne Hyland, curatorial associate. 

“‘Nick Cave: Mammoth’ builds on the museum’s commitment to present artists whose work speaks to the American experience and fosters connection,” said Jane Carpenter-Rock, acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “It is an honor to support a new body of work by one of today’s leading artists, the museum’s most significant commission to date by a single artist and to present it in dialogue with the sweep of American art across our galleries.” 

Cave remakes a suite of galleries on the museum’s third floor into a series of immersive environments. Against a 60-by-20-foot hand-beaded tapestry laid over a landscape of Chariton County, Missouri, towering lifeguard chairs rise—some crowned with massive skeletal mammoth heads, others draped in hides. In the center of the space, a glowing, 700-square-foot light table holds thousands of found objects—from vintage tools, juggling balls and pie plates to his grandmother’s thimble collection—arranged like paleontological specimens. Some remain recognizable; others have been transformed into masks, creatures and contraptions that feel alive with spirit and intention. 

The mammoths come alive in “Roam,” a video projected across four walls of an adjoining gallery that follows the massive creatures as they wander through present-day Chicago. In another space, Cave presents bronze sculptures from his “Amalgams” series, which fuse casts from his own body with natural forms such as flowers, birds and trees. These works, surrounded by metal tole flowers and antique cast-iron doorstops—including those from his grandparents’ home—evoke both loss and renewal, the solace of nature and the imprint of inheritance. 

“‘Mammoth’ is a conversation across time, a meditation on how and why we make, and how we live with what we inherit,” Newman said. “Nick Cave gathers fragments of daily life—toys, tools, keepsakes, even the remains of ancient creatures—and transforms them into a shared space of memory and imagination. His work is a powerful reminder that objects are often more than things; they carry our histories, our knowledge, and the stories that carry us forward.” 

The installation will be activated by a site-specific performance; details will be announced at a later date. 

About Nick Cave

Nick Cave (born 1959, Fulton, Missouri; lives and works in Chicago) is an artist and educator working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. His work builds upon generations of Black artists and artisans, from quilters such as his own grandmothers to the assemblers of yard art in the American South, who imbued cast-off materials with new meaning. Cave has harnessed this transformative impulse throughout his work—most famously in his series of “Soundsuits,” part sculpture and part garment, which conceal their wearers’ identities at the same time as they metamorphose into others.  

Cave earned a bachelor’s degree in fine art at Kansas City Art Institute, a master’s degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and is currently director of the graduate program in fashion at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is in many museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Arkansas).

Public Programs

In addition to a special performance, the museum will present public programs in support of the exhibition; details about these events will be available on the museum’s website.   

About the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is the flagship museum in the United States for American art and craft. It is home to one of the most significant collections of American art in the world.

The museum’s main building, located at Eighth and G streets N.W., is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. The museum’s Renwick Gallery, a branch museum dedicated to contemporary craft, is located on Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W. and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Check online for current hours and admission information.

Admission is free.