Exhibition
Kicking Silk
France-Lise McGurn at the Rodin
What me, worry?, 2026. Courtesy of the Artist, MASSIMODECARLO and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow.
When
Opens February 26, 2027
Where
Tickets
Free with museum admission
Membership
Members are always free
About
Kicking Silk invites visitors to experience the Rodin Museum as never before—reimagined as a multi-sensory installation by contemporary artist France-Lise McGurn (b. 1983, Scotland). Drawing inspiration from Rodin’s watercolors and writings on architecture, McGurn will create a bold, site-specific installation featuring murals on the gallery walls, painted cushions on its benches, colored screens filling the windows and skylights, and banners displayed along the building’s exterior. These elements will be placed in dialogue with a selection of Rodin sculptures handpicked by McGurn.
Image courtesy of Amy Gwatkin.
About the Artist:
France-Lise McGurn was born in 1983 in Glasgow and now lives and works between Glasgow and London. She studied for her BA at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee, in 2005; her MA in London at the Royal College of Art, London; and her MA in painting Exchange at Hunter College of Art, New York, in 2012.
McGurn predominantly works with painting to create layered installations that incorporate the gallery walls, floors, and ceilings. Her calligraphic brushstrokes are made intuitively and swiftly, prioritizing rhythm and movement, which convey a relationship to themes of intimacy, ecstasy, and memory.
She works indirectly from a collected archive of imagery, which forms the shapes, lines, and shorthand that spill across canvases and surfaces. These collected materials form the body of her own research and include celebrity autographs, classical sculpture, photography, women’s magazines, 70s film, advertisements, flyers, figurines, found objects, and furniture.
Selected solo exhibitions include: The Charm Offensive, Dundee Contemporary Arts (2026),  DEE-TOUR, MASSIMODECARLO, Domus Haus, Basel (2026); Bad TV, Strawberry, MASSIMODECARLO, London (2024); What Everyone Wants, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2024); Aloud, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museums, Glasgow (2022); In Emotia, Tramway, Glasgow (2020); Bodytronic, Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel (2020); and Sleepless, Tate Britain, London (2019).
Curators
Eleanor Nairne, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator and Head of Modern and Contemporary Art
Tara Contractor, The Agnes and Jack Mulroney Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture
With support from Camila Rondon, Coordinator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Support
Kicking Silk: France-Lise McGurn at the Rodin is made possible by The Daniel W. Dietrich II Fund for Excellence in Contemporary Art, Zoë S. Pappas, and Katherine Sachs.
Exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art are underwritten by the Annual Exhibition Fund supported by Andrea Baldeck, M.D., Julia and David Fleischner, Robert Hayes, and Mark W. Strong and Dana Strong.