The Bunker Artspace

THE BUNKER Artspace

The Bunker Artspace opened in December 2017 as a private art space in West Palm Beach, Florida. Presenting rotating exhibitions of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Bunker showcases a vast range of contemporary art, iconic pieces of furniture, and other curiosities. Built in the 1920s as a toy factory and utilized as a munitions armory during World War II, the Art Deco building now provides the ideal stage to show a considerable amount of work outside of DeWoody’s domestic spaces, and to a wider audience by invitation and through scheduled private tours.

Through DeWoody’s passion, vision, and continuing support of emerging artists and galleries, she has redefined the boundaries of collecting. By championing emerging, and at times, overlooked artists, especially in the early stages of their careers, she has amassed a truly unique collection. From a significant amount of work in the Collection, DeWoody and co-curators, Laura Dvorkin and Maynard Monrow have assembled a selection that includes works by leading contemporary artists, while always pushing beyond “the greatest hits” to deliver a more complete view of contemporary art today.

This season, our 2024/2025 Guest Curators, Kyle DeWoody and Zoe Lukov, will present A Wing and a Prayer, an exhibition of over 140 works (from both the BRD Collection and Kyle DeWoody’s personal collection) that originated from a question— how do we dare to hope when so much is stacked against us? The result is an assembly of answers from artists across generations, disciplines, traditions, geographies and perspectives.

The works explore prayer and ritual, the cosmic and the human, the sacred in the mundane, acts of creation and invocation, the natural and supernatural. We might go so far as to say that the making of an art object is a form of prayer, imbued with visions of reverence, faith, hope, survival and even transcendence.

Artists include Howardena Pindell, Lonnie Holley, Robert Irwin, Brittney Leeanne Williams, Elizabeth Jaeger, Tavares Strachan, Brad Kahlhamer, and Isabelle Albuquerque. The companion show Grace Under Fire, curated by Kyle DeWoody, Laura Dvorkin, and Maynard Monrow, is now on view at The Shepherd, Detroit through January 11, 2025.

In addition, the 2024/2025 Bunker Installation includes Licked Sucked Stacked Stuck, photographic series of iconic artworks rendered in candy by Paul Shore and Nicole Root, and a room of twenty-five works by Dan Fischer, the artist that painstakingly renders portraits of artists and their works in graphite. In this iteration, we will also present an exhibition of over 60 works depicting serpents from an expansive selection of artists from Kurt Schwitters to Ann Leda Shapiro, David Wojnarowicz, and Julie Curtiss. Another exhibition, which explores Surveillance, will highlight two major pioneers of the subject— Gretchen Bender and Julia Scher.

Beth Rudin DeWoody is an art collector, philanthropist, and curator who spends her time between Los Angeles, New York City, and West Palm Beach. She has been collecting art since 1969 and, over the years, has become deeply engaged in supporting the arts by championing emerging and underrecognized artists.

DeWoody is the Chair of the Rudin Family Foundations and recently retired from her role as Executive Vice President of Rudin Management. She serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hammer Museum, Desert X, the New Wave Artist Residency, Empowers Africa, and Save a Child India. She is also on the Parsons Board of Governors for The New School and the Photography Steering Committee at the Norton Museum of Art.

The Beth Rudin DeWoody collection does not accept unsolicited artwork. Thank you for understanding.