Daniel Minter

Work

Daniel Minter Sculptor · Painter · Printmaker

Work

Installation

Universe of Freedom Making at the Smithsonian NMAAHC: a curved freestanding wall and a long sweeping wall printed with layered collage in orange and deep blue, with patterned hands, faces and a boat, and low seats in a lit alcove
Installation view, In Slavery’s Wake, Smithsonian NMAAHC. Photo: Daniel Minter

2024–28 · Immersive installation

Universe of Freedom Making

The commissioned centerpiece of In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World, the Smithsonian NMAAHC’s first international exhibition. Touring Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Dakar and Liverpool through 2028.

About the installation, with video, at NMAAHC ↗ The exhibition: In Slavery’s Wake ↗

2022 · Installation with Eneida Sanches

through this to that

Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, October 2022 – January 2023. Video, painting, sculpture, assemblage and large-scale environments on the movement of people and ideas across the Afro-Atlantic world: by ship, by rail and on foot.

About the exhibition Watch: exhibition film ↗
A black cabinet of doors with three hanging brooms, set on railroad tracks, with projected forest footage behind
Installation view, through this to that, CMCA, 2022. Photo: Center for Maine Contemporary Art

Exhibitions

2026 · Museum exhibition

Thresholds

Part of The Otherworld Is Home, Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, August 28 – December 19, 2026. Carved assemblages and standing sculpture shown against blue and red walls. With a catalog essay by the artist.

About the exhibition ↗ Read the Colossal feature ↗
Gallery with blue and red walls hung with carved assemblages, a red and black standing sculpture on a green circle at center
Installation view, Thresholds, Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, 2026
A black house-shaped structure with open doorways stands in a gallery with wood floors, a dark shelf of small bottles on its side; tall blue portrait paintings hang on the white walls around it
Installation view, OTHERED: Displaced from Malaga, University of Southern Maine Art Gallery, 2018. Photo: Tim Greenway

2018 · Solo museum exhibition

OTHERED: Displaced from Malaga

University of Southern Maine Art Gallery, Gorham, Maine. Paintings, assemblage and a house-shaped structure, holding artifacts from archaeological digs on Malaga Island, honor the mixed-race community the State of Maine forcibly evicted from the island in 1912.

Read the Hyperallergic review ↗

Public art

2025 · Permanent outdoor sculpture

In the Voice of Trees

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Boothbay. Sixteen red pine trunks, stripped of their branches and bound together as a single form after the African proverb “Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.” The trunks are draped with clay beads, hand-formed with community members, that echo seeds, stones and relics: prayers for the next seven generations.

Commissioned by Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens for Deconstructing the Boundaries: Tending to Communities. The work grows out of In the Healing Language of Trees at Lynden Sculpture Garden.

More at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens ↗ Watch: artist talk with Arisa White ↗
In the Voice of Trees: a bundle of red pine trunks draped in long strands of clay beads, standing in a forest clearing
In the Voice of Trees, 2025. Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Photo: Daniel Minter
In the Healing Language of Trees: an ash tree wrapped in strands of carved wooden and white clay beads, surrounded by green foliage
In the Healing Language of Trees, 2021–23. Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee. Photo: Daniel Minter

2021–23 · Permanent outdoor sculpture

In the Healing Language of Trees

Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee. An ash tree lost to the emerald ash borer, adorned with beads carved together with community members. Commissioned through the 2021 Joyce Award and installed in June 2023.

Read: WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio, 2023 ↗ Watch: “Making Images into Symbols” ↗

Assemblage

A Distant Holla: a long wall of house-shaped assemblages in carved and painted wood, with figures, doors, brooms and painted panels, installed in a museum gallery
A Distant Holla
Installation view at the Portland Museum of Art
House-shaped assemblage with a tall carved blue head and beaded collar, a man in a blue cap, small carved figures in niches, painted panels and a guinea fowl
Currency Exchange
Three painted panels in a dark wood frame: figures in a beaded collar, a white face and a yellow shirt, each above a broken teacup, with a dark island on the horizon
Governor’s Tea
A red door with a carved face, a patterned panel holding a bottle in a niche ringed with nails, and a knife in a small box below
Turn So Quick I Thought he had a twin
A tall dark wood frame holding a painting in red, black and white of a figure and patterned forms above flames and a building, with a wheel and lever at the base
Griot of Necessity
Three carved and painted wood figures side by side: a bald man in a blue patterned shirt with niches of beans, a soldier in a helmet with dog tags and a bowl, and a man in a blue cap and overalls collaged with paper
Unchosen Choices
A carved wood shrine holding a small painting of a girl in white holding a hammer, with a row of old hammers hanging below
Unbuild
A small shrine of weathered wood holding a painting of a girl in a white dress with a red sash, a red iron balance scale hanging below
Balance

Paintings

Triptych in a wood frame: a crouching figure in orange patterns on red, a white-patterned figure bending over a sphere on blue, and birds amid white feathers and leaves on blue
Quantum Exchange
Acrylic on canvas
A floating figure filled with white patterns, leaves and a bare tree, wearing a red sneaker, above a second patterned figure trailing a golden vortex, a red hand reaching from the dark blue below
A possibility of flight on angry currents
Acrylic on canvas
A reclining figure drawn in white patterns on ochre, floating above a white cloud bank and a deep blue field streaked with falling light
A Clearance
Acrylic on canvas
Mixed-media collage of a woman in a patterned blouse and a boy wading into water, with printed text, small houses, a boat and waves, signed lower right
Gem of the Ocean
Collage
A dark face in profile beneath a red beaded headdress with four cowrie shells, a cowrie on a red cord, a yellow and black checkered robe and white-patterned hands below
From The Currents
Acrylic on canvas
A figure seen from behind in a white beaded headdress, patterned in white and pale blue, rising from dark water toward a pale horizon
A Counting of Seeds, lost count, so many rest on the bottom
Acrylic on canvas
A blue figure in a beaded headdress, a rainbow wing at the shoulder, beneath a white-lined spirit figure reaching down through a shaft of light
Once again I come to borrow your wings
Acrylic on canvas
A small boat at the top of a deep blue field, a pair of iron calipers below, and a blue head in profile at the bottom, an island on the horizon
Method One
Acrylic on canvas
A man floating face up above a dark boat on a rust-red ground, with a pale bundle hanging from a knotted rope into gray water below
Ballast
Acrylic on canvas

Inquiries

Works are available through Greenhut Galleries, Dowling Walsh Gallery and Cove Street Arts. Curators, institutions and press are welcome to contact the studio directly regarding exhibitions, loans and commissions.