Artists known primarily as painters, such as Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning, have taken up sculpture to think through problems or seek alternative experiences, while sculptors frequently turn to drawing and other two-dimensional media to plan future projects, explore their perceptions of existing work, or let their imaginations wander.

This selection from the Nasher’s permanent collection will present a conversation among sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by artists including Picasso and de Kooning, as well as Alberto Giacometti, Frank Stella, David Smith, Claes Oldenburg, and others.

The painter Ad Reinhardt famously remarked, “Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.” His quip depends on one of sculpture’s most characteristic qualities—its status as a three-dimensional object that shares our physical space. The creation of a sculpture that can be enjoyed from multiple viewpoints challenges artists to conceive works that can appear to change as the viewer moves around it.