Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory

For more than six decades, Vija Celmins has been creating exquisitely detailed paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints depicting natural imagery, including ocean surfaces, desert floors, and night skies.  Born in Latvia in 1938, Celmins immigrated to Indiana with her family in 1948. She attended graduate school at UCLA in the 1960's and remained in Los Angeles until 1981, when she moved to New York. In 1997, she was awarded the MacArthur “genius” Fellowship.

In our film, Celmins leads us through her 2019-20 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reviews photographs at her Soho studio, works on a woodcut print, and paints at her Water Mill studio. Also featured are the co-curators of the retrospective, Gary Garrels and Ian Alteveer, and Starr Figura, Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art.