Dynamic Duos: The Art of Working in Pairs

Artistic duos are iconic fixtures of the modern and contemporary art world. Coming together in temporary or long-term partnerships—as a result of romantic relationships, sibling ties, or friendships—they resist ideas of the singular genius and instead celebrate a sense of the collaborative and collective, often with the aim of effecting societal change or making a political statement. 

Though artists working together in pairs are often considered a phenomenon of the 20th and 21st centuries, cocreation has for centuries been a defining feature of how art is made. This exhibition demonstrates how artists have long explored the possibilities of what it means to work together. The featured prints, photographs, and illustrated books from the Library’s wide-ranging collections demonstrate the varied approaches artists have taken over 400 years to produce works that are the expression of not one, but two creators. 

This exhibition is organized by The New York Public Library and curated by Madeleine Viljoen, Curator of Prints and the Spencer Collection.

Contemporary Artists on View

We are delighted to be exhibiting work by the following contemporary artists in Dynamic Duos: The Art of Working in Pairs: Allora & Calzadilla (Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla), Bernd and Hilla Becher, Alighiero Fabrizio Boetti (Alighiero e Boetti), Jake and Dinos Chapman, DabsMyla, Sarah Elawad and Nathan Ross Davis, DGPH (Martin Lowenstein and Diego Vaisberg), Eva & Adele, Franticham (Francis van Maele and Kim Hye Mee, known as Antic-Ham), Gilbert & George, Jenny Holzer and Virgil Abloh, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Lapiztola (Rosario Martinez and Roberto Vega), LigoranoReese (Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese), Basim Magdy and Marianne Rinderknecht, McDermott & McGough (David McDermott and Peter McGough), Barry McGee and Todd James, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Ryan and Trevor Oakes, Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara, Katia Santibañez and James Siena, Nancy Spero and Leon Golub, Doug and Mike Starn, TARWUK (Ivana Vukšić and Bruno Pogačnik Tremow), Thukral & Tagra (Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra), Gert and Uwe Tobias, and Zebu (Lynn Lehmann and Dennis Gärtner).

Established in 1987 thanks to a gift from the Wallach family, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs unites what had formerly been three separate departments under a single banner. Divisional holdings comprise works of art as well as reference materials on painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography and the history of architecture from prehistoric times to the present. The Wallach Division also serves as the access point to the Spencer Collection of fine bindings and illustrated books. Together, these collections include more than one million works of art in various mediums and formats, complemented by nearly 700,000 monographs and periodicals. The quality, depth and scope of these holdings have earned the Wallach Division an international reputation among a broad variety of scholars and lovers of art.