Divination: Beverly Buchanan & Dionne Lee

Divination is running at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston from September 4, 2026, through February 14, 2027, in the Nina and Michael Zilkha Gallery. It pairs the work of the late Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015) with that of Dionne Lee (b. 1988), a Columbus-based artist and 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. The two are separated by a generation, but they share a focus on the myths, majesty, and dispossessions embedded in the American landscape. The show frames divination as a way of uncovering hidden histories, and it makes the connection literal: Buchanan's personal walking sticks sit alongside the dowsing rods Lee uses.

If you're familiar with Buchanan, you probably know her for the 'shack' sculptures and the stone works she left to decay across the American Southeast between 1979 and 1986. This exhibition doesn't lean on those. Instead, it focuses on her photography and archive materials—a side of her practice that curator Rebecca Matalon describes as an essential mode she'd previously overlooked. Seeing her work through that lens changes the conversation, shifting the focus from the objects she left behind to the way she documented the land.

Lee's work comes from a different place and a different time, but it speaks the same language of landscape and memory. By putting her alongside Buchanan, the show lets you trace how these two artists approach the same ground from different angles. It's the second in a series pairing artists from different generations, following 2021's Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray & Jessi Reaves.

After its run in Houston, Divination will travel next year to the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. You've got until February 14 to catch it here at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.