Is love intrinsic, or is it a habit? What is the difference between love and friendship? What is the relationship of love to truth, freedom, and justice? These are just some of the questions to be explored in What Is Left Unspoken, Love, featuring contemporary artworks from 1987 to 2021 that address the different ways the most important thing in life—love—is expressed.

Organized during a time of social and political discord, when cynicism often seems to triumph over hope, this exhibition will examine love as a profound subject of critical commentary from time immemorial yet with a persistently elusive definition. As poet and painter Etel Adnan wrote, love is “not to be described, it is to be lived.”

Love will feature more than seventy works, including paintings, sculpture, photography, video and media art, by more than thirty-five international artists based in North America, Europe, and Asia such as Rina Banerjee, Patty Chang, Jeffrey Gibson, Tomashi Jackson, María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez, Rashid Johnson, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Ebony G. Patterson, Magnus Plessen, Gabriel Rico, RongRong and inri, and Carrie Mae Weems.