Terry Winters: Vitalized Geometry

Terry Winters: Vitalized Geometry is open now at The Menil Collection, in the Main Building. It runs from September 25, 2026, through April 4, 2027, and brings together 44 prints and works on paper by the New York artist.

Winters is a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker who works across woodcut, silkscreen, lithography, and other printmaking methods. He draws from mathematical systems and the structures of the natural world, and he describes each medium as an instrument—almost in a musical sense—used to embody an image at actual size as 'vitalized geometry,' hopefully with a sense of life. The show pulls from that idea, showing how he uses these different techniques to build images that feel both calculated and organic.

The exhibition celebrates two gifts to the Menil. In 2024, photographer Jack Shear and the estate of his late husband, artist Ellsworth Kelly, gave fifty-one works. In May 2026, Winters added seven more, including Azimuth (2024). Between those two gifts, the Menil now holds seventy-six Winters works, one of the most significant holdings of his work in the United States.

Winters is a Pratt Institute graduate who lives and works in New York City and Columbia County, New York. He's had a long connection to the Menil: he was an inaugural member of the Menil Drawing Institute Committee and spoke at the museum in February 2017. This show is a good way to see that relationship come full circle, with a large chunk of his graphic work now part of the collection here in Houston. Admission is free.