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George Rickey Foundation The George Rickey Foundation advances appreciation and understanding of the life and work of artist George Rickey (1907-2002).

Find George Rickey’s sculptures at Frieze Masters in London’s Regent Park this week from October 14-17, 2026! MARUANI ME...
10/12/2026

Find George Rickey’s sculptures at Frieze Masters in London’s Regent Park this week from October 14-17, 2026! MARUANI MERCIER Gallery will show indoor works by Rickey in their booth F05.
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Learn more about the two Frieze fairs in London at https://www.frieze.com/fairs/frieze-masters.
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George Rickey:
(1) “Three Open Parallelepipeds,” 1985. Stainless steel. Collection of MARUANI MERCIER Gallery, Brussels.
(2) “Column of Five Tapered Lines,” 1992–93. Stainless steel. Collection of George Rickey Foundation.

60 years ago, the exhibition “George Rickey: Sixteen Years of Kinetic Art” opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Wa...
09/30/2026

60 years ago, the exhibition “George Rickey: Sixteen Years of Kinetic Art” opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC!
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Enjoy a look back at some of the works exhibited in the 1966 catalog from the George Rickey Foundation archives, and see some of the exhibited works in person as they now belong to public collections like the Baltimore Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Williams College, Storm King Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the University of Notre Dame .

And so the seasons churn. 🍂◽ Autumn is here in the in the northern hemisphere!_________________George Rickey, “Space C...
09/22/2026

And so the seasons churn. 🍂◽ Autumn is here in the in the northern hemisphere!
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George Rickey, “Space Churn with Spheres III,” 1972. Stainless steel. Baltimore Museum of Art.

“I realized that the form didn’t need to be a closed mass but could be a series of points or lines around which the mind...
09/14/2026

“I realized that the form didn’t need to be a closed mass but could be a series of points or lines around which the mind makes an envelope.”
– George Rickey, quoted in Nan Rosenthal’s “George Rickey” (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977).
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George Rickey, “Two Open Rectangles One Up One Down” (1978) in motion. Photos by Achim Pahle. George Rickey Foundation Archives.

09/05/2026

Attention Washington D.C.! Mark your calendar for Saturday, September 26 at 4:30 pm at The Kreeger Museum where the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company will present Vectors: a work celebrating kinetic sculptor George Rickey.
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Set within the Great Hall of The Kreeger Museum, this dance transforms the experience of viewing George Rickey’s kinetic sculpture into a living dialogue between steel, wind, architecture, and the human body. Rickey’s precisely balanced forms—activated by the slightest breeze—become both inspiration and point of departure, their quiet rotations echoed in the dancers’ fluid spirals, suspended balances, and sweeping pathways. Celebrated for their graceful, wind-driven motion, Rickey’s sculptures blur the line between engineering and choreography.
The performance is followed by a talk with Dana Tai Soon Burgess and a w**e reception outdoors with Rickey’s sculpture.
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Learn more and reserve a spot on the waitlist for this sold-out program at https://www.kreegermuseum.org/danataisoonburgessdancecompany.
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George Rickey, “Two Lines Oblique Down III,” 1970. Stainless steel. The Kreeger Museum, Washington, D.C.

08/28/2026

“Usually, small sculptures are not maquettes. They are simply small sculptures with their own rights to be considered sculptures. I am happiest when I work on a scale where I can do it all myself, because then I am free at any point to change, modify, add, crop out—without having to go through an administrative process telling others to do that.” – George Rickey
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Clip of “George Rickey: Portrait of an Artist,” 1987. Directed by Seth Schneidman. Seven Hills Production.

Find George Rickey’s “Two Lines in a T Six Feet” in the Ogunquit Museum Of American Art’s special exhibition “American C...
08/20/2026

Find George Rickey’s “Two Lines in a T Six Feet” in the Ogunquit Museum Of American Art’s special exhibition “American Conversations,” on view through November 15, 2026!
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In light of the United States’ 250th anniversary of its founding, the exhibition examines how artists have contributed to the ongoing dialogue surrounding the idea of “America” over the past 125 years. Each section pairs two works of art, inviting viewers to consider how artists across generations and backgrounds engage with themes central to American identity and experience.
In the introduction to the exhibition, the Museum pairs George Rickey (1907–2002) with Alexander Calder (1898–1976). What Calder set in motion with his mobiles, Rickey pushed even further in the field of kinetic sculpture.
“I had to wonder whether Calder had said it all; when I found he had not, I had to choose among the many doors I then found open. I had to learn to be a mechanic and to recall the physics I had learned at sixteen. I had to make an art in which every object had to be preconceived.”
– George Rickey, 1979
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Learn more about the exhibition at https://ogunquitmuseum.org/exhibition/american-conversations/.
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Installation view of “American Conversations,” Ogunquit Museum of American Art. Photo by Luc Demers.

50 years ago in 1976, George Rickey’s six foot sculpture “Two Open Rectangles, Excentric Variation III” was stolen fro...
08/14/2026

50 years ago in 1976, George Rickey’s six foot sculpture “Two Open Rectangles, Excentric Variation III” was stolen from Middlebury College sometime in the night from its setting in front of the Christian Johnson Memorial Building after being installed for just a week. Rickey remade the sculpture in 1978 as it was never returned nor found, but he decided to send a replacement to Middlebury College at an even larger scale of twelve feet to make it twice as hard to steal. The new piece, “Two Open Rectangles Excentric VI, Square Section,” stands today back in front of the Johnson Memorial Building.
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(Thieves if you’re reading this and your conscience has been nagging at you these 50 years, let us know where it is pretty please?)
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(1) Newspaper clipping from The Middlebury Campus Newspaper, Volume LXXI, Issue 2, September 29, 1976.
(2) George Rickey, “Two Open Rectangles Excentric VI, Square Section,” 1976. Stainless Steel. Collection of the Middlebury College Museum of Art, Vermont. Purchase with funds provided by the Friends of Art Acquisition Fund and a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1977.002. Photo by Middlebury College Museum of Art.

08/04/2026

Conical movement, otherwise known as excentric movement, is created by sculpture elements set at a 45-degree angle to the support post. After George Rickey began exploring excentric movement, he created sculptures with elements whose movements describe a conical form.
“I had already explored the conical movement of a line. With (these pieces) I made the line describe a surface.”
– “Two Conical Segments, 1978-79, George Rickey in Berlin,” Berlinische Galerie, 1992, p. 233
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George Rickey, “Two Conical Segments Gyratory Gyratory IV – Homage to W.A.M., Duisburg,” 1980. Stainless steel. LehmbruckMuseum, Duisburg, Germany. Video by Marin Sulllivan, 2026.

07/26/2026

Wishing you balance when things feel all wobbly.
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George Rickey, “Double Wobble,” 2000. Stainless steel. George Rickey Estate.

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