Curated from the Davis collections by internationally recognized artist Kiki Smith, this gallery integrates dozens of vessels from a wide range of cultures and periods into an installation of her design. Smith also selected a single painting—a spectacular 18th-century Mexican ex-voto depicting a woman enduring a mastectomy—for a key location in the gallery. Fragmented reproductions of the painting are dispersed throughout the installation, which Smith has titled Cut from Her Breast.

By inviting Kiki Smith to curate an installation from the permanent collections, the Davis expands the ways in which works of art are experienced and interpreted. Smith joins a growing number of artists sought after as curators, and her selection calls attention to how the display of objects encodes and constructs meaning.

Smith’s artistic production engages a wide range of media from installation to sculpture, printmaking, and photography. Based in New York City since the mid-1970s, she has exhibited widely and is represented in collections throughout the world. She has also organized exhibitions at the CUE Art Foundation, the International Print Center New York, the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.