Eat Pray Bove

Carol Bove
You are likely familiar with Bove’s distinctive body of recent work: lightly crumpled stainless steel, covered in matte urethane paint, often bright yellow or reddish orange or other saturated-but-friendly tones. Photo: Madeleine Thomas/BFA.com
Marion Maneker
March 6, 2026

Join Puck to listen to this article

You know a museum show is about to get a lot of attention when, during the previews, curators and museum directors post about how much they wish they had been involved with it. When Carol Bove’s new mid-career retrospective opened on Thursday at the Guggenheim, there was an immediate flood of attaboy Instagram posts. The Whitney’s Scott Rothkopf wrote that it “feels almost like a miracle to find something so sophisticated and finely tuned filling such a big museum today.” And the independent curator Cecilia Alemani posted that while she “was not usually the jealous type,” seeing the Bove show inspired “total awe at the Guggenheim.” Her admiration was so great that she added her highest praise: The retrospective “made me wish I worked in a museum.”