“Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW” will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from April 30, 2017, through July 30, 2017. This will be the first major survey of the American artist’s career spanning 40 years. Termed as one of the most influential artists working in the fields of image production and an institutional critique, the exhibition takes its title from one of Lawler’s iconic work “Why Pictures Now,” 1982, a black-and-white photograph showing a matchbook resting against an ashtray.

The exhibition consists of a sequence of mural-scale, adjusted to fit images set in dynamic relation to non-linear groupings of photographs — of collectors’ homes, auction houses, and museum installations — distinctive of Lawler’s conceptual exercises. An empty space presents black-and-white tracings of Lawler’s photographs that have been printed on vinyl and mounted directly on the wall. Lawler’s work offers a defiant, witty, and sustained feminist analysis of the strategies that inform art’s production and reception.