Beverly Semmes

The Dresses

Jun 27, 2025-Jan 4, 2026

Beverly Semmes, Rhonda Lavonda Yolanda Chiffonda, 1995. Organza and crushed velvet, 32 feet long (each).

This installation by Beverly Semmes features four monumental dresses crafted from velvet and organza. Suspended on a white wall with a pronounced architectural scale, the sensuous, floating forms evoke both intimacy and grandeur. A formal exploration of pattern, texture, and color, the exaggerated proportions—what Semmes describes as a “perfect size 6,000”—disrupt conventional scales, connecting the viewer's body with the surrounding architecture. At once whimsical and unsettling, the dresses stand in for absent bodies, inviting reflection on the people who might inhabit them and traditional ideals of femininity, identity, and beauty.

Since the late 1980s, Beverly Semmes has created work that centers on the tactile and transformative power of materials. While she often works with fabric and clay, her art also includes glass, video, painting, and performance. Semmes combines references to craft, domestic life, and fine art to build a visual language that is both alluring and sharply critical. Her sculptures and installations explore ideas about gender, power, and how women are seen and represented. By playing with scale, texture, and form, she challenges traditional expectations of women’s bodies. Influenced by expressionism, minimalism, and feminist thought, Semmes creates work that is at once abstract and physical, playful and provocative.

This installation was originally commissioned by Progressive Insurance, the Mayfield Village-based corporation.

Co-presented with Progressive Corporation

About the Artist


Beverly Semmes. Photo: Ross Collab. Courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC.
Beverly Semmes Beverly Semmes (b. 1958) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work incorporates sculpture, painting, drawing, film, photography, and performance. These complementary elements adhere in surprising ways, probing the paradoxes and complexities of the female body and its representation. Based in New York, Semmes has been honored with many solo museum exhibitions, including presentations at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the ICA Philadelphia; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; The Ginza Art Space, Tokyo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In fall 2025, her alma mater, Tufts University, will present a major solo exhibition at the University Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include Always In Relation: 50 Years of the Gallery at Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown; The New Village: Ten Years of New York Fashion at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC as well as Witch Hunt at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the 57th Carnegie International, at the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. Semmes’ work can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, among others. The artist is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC.

Beverly Semmes. Photo: Ross Collab. Courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC.

Beverly Semmes

Beverly Semmes (b. 1958) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work incorporates sculpture, painting, drawing, film, photography, and performance. These complementary elements adhere in surprising ways, probing the paradoxes and complexities of the female body and its representation. Based in New York, Semmes has been honored with many solo museum exhibitions, including presentations at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the ICA Philadelphia; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; The Ginza Art Space, Tokyo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In fall 2025, her alma mater, Tufts University, will present a major solo exhibition at the University Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include Always In Relation: 50 Years of the Gallery at Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown; The New Village: Ten Years of New York Fashion at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC as well as Witch Hunt at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the 57th Carnegie International, at the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. Semmes’ work can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, among others. The artist is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, NYC.