Adam Pendleton turns a white stairwell into a black space
Editors ·
From 10 October the Stedelijk presents his first museum exhibition in the Netherlands. Eight gold drawings transform the gallery around a historic staircase.
Adam Pendleton: Some Wild Kind of Language opens at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on 10 October 2026 and runs to 17 January 2027. The museum calls it his first museum exhibition in the Netherlands, with paintings in the IMC Hall of Honour and large drawings around the staircase.
That staircase has a history of its own. Willem Sandberg had the brick walls painted white in 1938 and, later as director, turned the galleries white too. Pendleton transforms the 1895 stairwell gallery into a “black cube” for this exhibition. Eight monumental gold drawings on matt black paper occupy its niches.
Paintings in the Hall of Honour are sometimes almost six metres wide. The museum names Black Dada, Days and WE ARE NOT as series that respond to modernist works in its collection. Pendleton begins on paper with paint, ink, watercolour, spray paint, words and stencils, then uses screen printing by hand or machine.
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The artist has worked with his Black Dada method since 2008. According to the museum, it concerns the freedom to break rules and challenge expectations of what a Black artist should make. That inquiry enters a building where even the colour of the walls has an art-historical story.
The Stedelijk is at Museumplein 10 and opens daily from 10 am to 6 pm. The photographs accompanying this article show the museum exterior in 2019 and 2018, not the exhibition or any work by Pendleton.