Artwork in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Can Be

Want to make an fine art historian express joy? Ask them to name the nigh iconic artwork of the 21st century. Turns out, it'southward not so piece of cake to unmarried out the most significant work of art created over the past 17 years. All the same, some leading figures in the art world—from curators and gallery directors to artists and sale house executives—gamely agreed to attempt their hand at narrowing it down.

What single artwork defines this awkward, information-befuddled teenage century? Some simply couldn't cull simply one work, while others ultimately refused to reply at all. But many, to our pleasant surprise, told united states of america exactly what they think. Below, 14 art experts weigh in on the 21st century'due south about iconic artwork.

Pablo Helguera, The School of Pan-American Unrest, 2006. Installation view, Schoolhouse in forepart of the Galeria Nacional de Arte, Honduras. Courtesy of the Artist

Eric Shiner, senior vice president of gimmicky art at Sotheby'southward

Pablo Helguera'south The Schoolhouse of Panamerican Unrest (2005). A multi-months-long performance that unfolded between Alaska and Argentina, The School of Panamerican Unrest saw artist Pablo Helguera bulldoze through the Americas with a portable schoolhouse and lecture podium as he conducted think tanks, lectures, and artist statements throughout North, Central, and S America. It stands, for me, as one of the well-nigh important durational artworks of this century, and its message of unity, dialogue, and collaboration is more than important now than ever before.

Kara Walker's A Subtlety (2014). Monumental in its scale and critical in its necessity and timeliness, Walker'south 2022 sculpture—made for an installation at a former Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn—stands equally not only one of the greatest works of the 21st century but possibly of all time. Its forceful presence empowers women, subaltern voices, and anyone who stands for social justice and equality, just as it stands every bit ane of the strongest letters always made confronting the ongoing legacy of slavery and racism in this nation, and by extension, the world.

Teshima Art Museum by Ryue Nishizawa and Rei Naito (2010). Decisively the perfect installation seamlessly combining Nishizawa's architectural triumph and Naito's pure magic, the project becomes an otherworldly realm that transports viewers into a zone of meditation and awe that ultimately takes one's breath abroad. Naito's subtle, yet highly engineered addition of water aerosol that become animated—seemingly alive organisms to Nishizawa'south sleek space—makes the viewer terminate in her tracks, endlessly puzzled by how the action earlier her occurs.

Marta Minujín, The Parthenon of Books (2017), Friedrichsplatz, Kassel, documenta xiv, Photo: Roman März.

Julia Converti, d irector of arteBA

Marta Minujín's The Parthenon of Forbidden Books.An icon of her time, the Argentinian artist was invited to participate in documenta's concluding edition with her Parthenon of prohibited books, which was originally synthetic in Argentina after the country's military dictatorship fell in 1983 to celebrate the recovery of republic and to protestation against censorship. 30-four years later on, the piece returns to advise a massive collaboration re-evaluating and reinforcing freedom in a different context. (She is also an absolute pioneer of art.)

Anne Imhof'due southFaust installation from the High german Pavilion was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Venice Biennale. It is a powerful and disturbing operation installation that poses questions about the present and the gimmicky club. The young High german artist achieves withFaust a provocative piece of challenging beauty. An experience that bothers, and becomes extremely irresistible—an absolutely contemporary experience.

Mickalene Thomas's Le Déjeuner sur L'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noir (2009). Prototype courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery.

Natalie Frank, artist

Mickalene Thomas'south Le Déjeuner sur L'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noir (2009). Subverting a generally white and male person art history, Thomas shows usa the style frontwards. Using nontraditional, craft media, she mixes high and low—taking the once scandalous Manet painting and turning it into a tête-a-tête of glamorous black women, exploring beauty, race, and constructed identity. This was as well a site-specific wall piece in the windows exterior of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Cassils, PISSED (2017). Image courtesy of the artists and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York

Gonzalo Casals, director, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Fine art, New York

Cassils'southPISSED(2017). PISSED consists of a glass cube containing 200 gallons of urine. A collection of all the liquid the creative person has passed since the Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era executive gild allowing transgender students to use the bathroom matching their called gender identities. The sculpture is contextualized past sound recordings from the Virginia school lath and the 4th Court of Appeals articulating the ignorance and biases that run through every level of judicial proceedings.

Pussy Riot'sOperation at Cathedral of Christ the Savior (2012). The video documents a performance to denounce the support of Putin'due south re-election by the Orthodox Church. The video and the subsequent trial and sentence brought international attending to the state of gratis speech in Russian federation.

Marta Minujín's Parthenon of Books(2017). Over 100,000 formerly or currently banned books from all over the world materialized a replica of the temple in the Acropolis in Athens—the cradle of democracy. The installation took place at Friedrichsplatz in Kassel, where, on May nineteen, 1933, some ii,000 books were burned past the Nazis. At the cease of the exhibition, visitors tin can take books domicile with them. This installation traces its origins to a similar work created in Argentina in 1983, shortly later the collapse of the civilian-war machine dictatorship there.

James Turrell's Roden Crater (ongoing). ©2017 Skystone Foundation, © James Turrell.

Almine Ruiz-Picasso, owner, Almine Rech Gallery

James Turrell'due south Roden Crater.  Still in progress, it'due south the piece of work of a lifetime. Many artists tried to work with light just none could reach James Turrell's level.

Kara Walker's A Subtlety…or the Marvelous Sugar Baby (2014). Image courtesy of gigi via flickr.

Carrie Rebora Barratt, deputy director for collections and assistants at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

It's of import to retrieve about how we define "best" and how we define "work of art" now. I think of cultural relevance, of artworks that probe bug in contemporary lodge, so my choice would be Kara Walker's "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" (2014) at the Domino Saccharide Refinery in Brooklyn. Non merely was information technology a very finely crafted, brilliantly engineered work of fine art that reflected the past, present, and futurity of our world, that created stories, but it also was completely integral to an architectural infinite, which it brought back to life. And information technology was a complete sensory experience: It was viscid on the walls, so there was a sense of touch, and ane of my favorite things about it, likewise, was the smell of the sugar.

But here at the Met, my world is the whole world, and so I'm also thinking of the works nosotros've lost, in Palmyra, in Syrian arab republic, in Mosul, and in Nimrud, also as Confederate statues. In a historic sense, civilization and heritage, identity and humanity are intertwined, then the work that now exists is in our memory. Videos of the destruction are perhaps news, non fine art, but they do go performative in the manner they make us think about culture.

Ai Weiwei alongside his work Direct (2015). Photo by Alex B. Huckle/Getty Images.

Philip Hewat-Jaboor, chairman of Masterpiece London

Works like Olafur Eliasson'south golden sun in The Conditions Project, which filled the Turbine Hall at the Tate in 2003; and Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Floating Piers (2014–2016) come up to mind. These were aggressive and memorable artworks that reveal the potential of gimmicky art to engage not just art lovers, just anyone and everyone, and for that, they're very beautiful.

But I'd have to say my choice isAi Weiwei'due south Straight from 2008–2012. It is impressive in calibration and beauty, only even more than in what it has to say. Made of 150 tons of steel rods from buildings damaged in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, it'south a profound and beautiful memorial to the events and those that lost their lives. To make the piece of work, the creative person collected the twisted steel rods, so—with his studio—mitt bent them back into shape. Information technology must accept been an astonishing undertaking, and my feeling is that his piece of work is some of the about genuine fine art existence made today.

Janet Cardiff, The Forty Function Motet (2001) installation at Fuentiduena Chapel at The Cloisters museum and gardens. Paradigm: The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Wilson Santiago.

Luke DuBois, artist

Janet Cardiff'southwardThe Twoscore Function Motet (2001). In 2017, nosotros talk a lot about virtual and augmented reality. It'southward maybe useful then to look back and celebrate an artwork that, from where I sit, prefigures and speaks to all of these things. Janet Cardiff'southward work, in which forty loudspeakers replay a multi-channel recording of a choir, one voice per speaker, performing an 11-minute work by the 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis, is deceptively unproblematic. What makes it magical, to me, is the style it completely transports the audience, putting the states in the center of an absent choir whose voices are transformed by the acoustics of the installation infinite. I can retrieve of no improve VR experience than to close your eyes in the middle of the installation; I can retrieve of no better AR experience than to walk from speaker to speaker and heed to the voices, one past i, and how they transform and are transformed by their surroundings.

Lala Rukh, Crimes against Women (1985), affiche for Women'southward Action Forum entrada. Image courtesy documenta xiv.

Vilma Jurkute , d irector, Alserkal Artery

It'southward hard to single out a specific artwork, however Pakistani activist and abstractionist Lala Rukh has had a significant bear on on contemporary South Asian art. A founding artist of Gray Noise gallery, her piece of work was meditative and minimalist, and her recently commissioned piece of work shown at documenta 14 in Athens, and a drove of historic works in Kassel, volition at present take on an even greater significance, as we sadly lost Lala earlier this summertime.

Peter Zumthor's Bruder Klaus Field Chapel (2007). Photo by Florian Seiffert, courtesy of Creative Commons.

Michelle Grabner, artist and co-artistic managing director, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Fine art

Peter Zumthor's Bruder Klaus Field Chapel (2007) in Mechernich, Germany. It is an exercise in symmetry, sophistication, and sensuality wrought from the material contrasts of concrete and burnt forest. It is a 21st-century observance of abstraction and profound humanism.

Damien Hirst'southward For the Beloved of God (2007). Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2012.

Susan 50. Talbott, executive director of The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Damien Hirst's For the Honey of God (2007) is my choice for the most iconic artwork of the 21st century. It represents the commodification of fine art and the nihilism of the early on part of this century. I don't believe it is a great work of fine art, but rather a manifestation of a particular culture—the art world—at a particular moment in time.

Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project (2003). Photograph: Studio Olafur Eliasson
Courtesy the artist: neugerriemschneider, Berlin: and Tanya Bonakdar, New York
© Olafur Eliasson 2003.

Li Shurui, artist

Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project (2003) at Tate's Turbine Hall. At the first of the new millennium, weather condition—particularly climate change—and the environment became a major global issue and a topic of discussion pervading all realms of discourse. This work was a synthesized mural—a symbol of human-made or "artificial nature," and for six months, it provided a state of affairs in which people could interact with information technology like a natural phenomenon; they could lay back as though at the beach, sit in reflective meditation, or freely express themselves in its presence in whatever ways their sensibilities required.

Amar Kanwar'south The Sovereign Forest (2011–). Image courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery and the artist.

Diana Campbell Betancourt, artistic director of Samdani Fine art Foundation and primary curator of the Dhaka Art Summit

1. Amwar Kanwar'sThe Sovereign Forest(2011–); 2. Nalini Malani'sTransgressions(2011); iii. Imran Qureshi'sBlessings upon the Land of my Love(2011); 4. Shilpa Gupta'due southUntitled (2014) from the Dhaka Art Summit; v. Naeem Mohaiemen's Rankin Street (1953); six. Bharti Kher'sThe Peel Speaks a Language Not Its Own (2006); vii. Nilima Sheikh'sEach Night Put Kashmir in your Dreams(2003–2014); 8. Shahzia Sikander'sParallax(2013); 9. Huma Bhabha'sThe Orientalist (2007).

Kwan Sheung Chi's I MILLION (Japanese Yen) (2012). Courtesy of Yuka Tsuruno Gallery, Tokyo, and Gallery Leave, Hong Kong.

Lorraine Kiang-Malingue, director, Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong and director of Condo Shanghai

Kwan Sheung Chi'southward video, 1 1000000 (Japanese Yen) (2012); Samson Young's "Songs for Disaster Relief" (2017) at the Venice Biennale; Tino Seghal'south performance,This Variation, at documenta 13 in 2012.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (1503–1517). Courtesy of the Lourve, via Wikipedia Commons.

George Goldner, art counselor; one-time chairman of prints and drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The most iconic piece of work from 2001–2017? A misuse of the word icon for a catamenia that is destined to fade into oblivion. At that place's no Mona Lisa, Raft of the Medusa, or Guernica to be plant here.

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