Kent Monkman: Officer and Laughing Girl
New York (June 4, 2026) — This fall, in its intimate Cabinet Gallery, The Frick Collection will present an installation of new paintings by the contemporary artist Kent Monkman (b. Canada, 1965), whose practice explores historic European art and narratives from an Indigenous perspective. For this project, Monkman takes inspiration from Officer and Laughing Girl (ca. 1657), one of the Frick’s three paintings by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, to probe the ways in which it and other artworks of its time represented the effects of global trade and colonization.
With his characteristic humor, style, and deeply researched iconography, Monkman deploys his alter ego—the time-traveling, shapeshifting, gender-fluid Miss Chief—to imagine an evolution of Indigenous and European encounters over the last five centuries, with their attendant cultural, technological, and environmental changes. After experiencing the installation, visitors will be able to proceed to the nearby South Hall, in the permanent collection galleries, to view the beloved work by Vermeer that prompted the series.
Kent Monkman: Officer and Laughing Girl is the latest installment in the Frick’s longstanding tradition of inviting contemporary artists and cultural figures to engage with its holdings through exhibitions, lectures, and publications. These initiatives—including recent projects in the newly conceived Cabinet Gallery—offer fresh insights and perspectives on the Frick’s centuries-old works and explore how the collection continues to inspire art, literature, and creative production today.
Commented Aimee Ng, the Frick’s Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, “I have long admired how Kent brings lesser-known histories to light, grapples with complex topics, and stirs emotion through his art, which at the same time celebrates beauty, irreverence and mirth, and humanity’s critical connections with each other and with the earth. Sustained by a deep study of European history and art, his paintings create new and enlightening ways of seeing the past and present, enriched by Indigenous perspectives, history, and culture. We hope visitors will enjoy reconsidering the conversation at the heart of Vermeer’s iconic Officer and Laughing Girl through the imagined encounters in Kent’s paintings.”
In spring 2027, Monkman’s series will travel from the Frick to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual English–Canadian French catalogue featuring texts by Monkman, Ng, and Emma Hassencahl-Perley, Curator of Indigenous Art at the Beaverbrook. Published by both museums in association with D Giles Limited, the hardcover volume will be available in November 2026.
Leadership support for this exhibition is provided by Rosamond Ivey. Additional support is provided by Dr. Tai-Heng Cheng and by Sandra Wijnberg and Hugh Freund.
ABOUT KENT MONKMAN
A member of ocêkwi sîpiy (Fisher River Cree Nation), Kent Monkman lives and works between Toronto and New York City. His interdisciplinary art—including paintings, sculptures, prints, video, and performance—is held in the permanent collections of public institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the National Gallery of Canada, and macLYON. Private foundations that house his works include Art Bridges, the Gochman Family Collection, the Sobey Art Foundation, and the Walker Youngbird Foundation. His works have been exhibited at institutions such as the Louvre-Lens, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Royal Ontario Museum.
In 2019, Monkman was the inaugural artist invited to participate in The Met’s Great Hall Commission project. In 2025, Monkman’s first large-scale, internationally touring exhibition, History is Painted by the Victors, opened at the Denver Art Museum and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal and is currently on view through August 16, 2026, at the Akron Art Museum. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
ABOUT THE FRICK COLLECTION
Housed in one of New York City’s last great Gilded Age homes, The Frick Collection provides intimate encounters with one of the world’s foremost collections of fine and decorative arts. Open since 1935, the institution originated with Henry Clay Frick, who bequeathed his Fifth Avenue residence and collection of European paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts for the enjoyment of the public. The museum’s holdings, which encompass masterworks from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century, have grown over the decades, more than doubling in number since the opening of the museum. The Frick Art Research Library, founded more than one hundred years ago by Henry Clay Frick’s daughter Helen Clay Frick, is today a leading art history research center that serves students, scholars, and the public.
Last spring, the Frick completed a major renovation and enhancement project and reopened on April 17, 2025, with great fanfare. Designed by Selldorf Architects, with executive architect Beyer Blinder Belle, the project was developed to honor the historic legacy and character of the Frick while addressing critical infrastructural and operational needs.
For more information, please visit frick.org.