Richard Long
R O C K S
R I V E R

October 9, 2026–June, 2027

This October, the Chinati Foundation presents ROCKS RIVER, an exhibition of new work by Richard Long, the innovative British artist whom Chinati’s founder, Donald Judd, once described as “the best in Europe.” Judd installed Long’s work Sea Lava Circles (1988)—Icelandic lava stones placed in an arrangement of three concentric circles—on a concrete platform, formerly a tennis court, adjacent to Chinati’s Arena. This is the first exhibition dedicated to new work by Long in the foundation’s 40-year history.

Since the mid-1960s, Richard Long has been celebrated internationally for works that incorporate, in a variety of combinations, walking, photographs, text, and common environmental materials like stones, mud, and water. Long’s seminal A Line Made by Walking, 1967, consists of a walk along a line of indeterminate length and duration, resulting in a photograph of lightly flattened grass. With this work, and others of the period, Long introduced new questions to the language of sculpture, performance, and documentation, with which artists and art historians still grapple. For his upcoming exhibition at Chinati, Long pursues an artmaking practice which, while fundamentally consistent in its materials and methods, often involves universal entities such as lines and circles. As he said in a 2020 interview with the Brooklyn Rail, “every walk is about a different idea.”

ROCKS RIVER will open during the 39th Chinati Weekend, October 9–11, 2026, alongside a program engaging his work. Following the opening, a series of related public programs will take place throughout late 2026 and 2027. Details about these events will be shared in the coming months.

About Richard Long
Richard Long was born in Bristol, UK in 1945 and he lives and works between London and Bristol. He studied at the West of England College of Art, Bristol (1962–65), then St Martin’s School of Art, London (1966–68). Major solo exhibitions include Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2023); M Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (2021); Chateau La Coste, Provence, France (2021); De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (2019); Fondation CAB, Brussels, Belgium (2018); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2017); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2015); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2010); Tate Britain, London, UK (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK (2007); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, USA (2006); National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan (1996); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA (1994); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA (1986). He represented Britain at the 37th Venice Biennale (1976) and won the Turner Prize in 1989. He received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture (1990), has been elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2001), awarded Japan’s Praemium Imperiale in the field of sculpture (2009), made a CBE in 2013 and was knighted in the 2018 Honours List.