Strong Discover Hook
This fall, the Guggenheim’s iconic spiral will become the setting for a story that reaches far beyond the museum walls. Taryn Simon’s “Father Country I Do Love You” opens September 18, 2026, filling the entire Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda with 42 interconnected works that combine photography, text, video and sculpture.
Nearly a decade in the making, the exhibition follows the real-life story of an unnamed federal agent whose work placed him in the middle of events involving governments, borders, evidence and people whose lives were changed by decisions far beyond their control. But Simon’s project is also deeply personal: the exhibition is dedicated to her father, whose own career working for the U.S. government left behind a story she never fully knew.
Opening during the 250th anniversary year of the United States, the exhibition arrives at a moment when questions about American identity, institutional power and the stories hidden behind official histories remain particularly resonant.
A Guggenheim First
“Father Country I Do Love You” represents a significant moment in the Guggenheim’s history.
The exhibition is the first monographic presentation by a photography-based artist to occupy the museum’s entire rotunda, according to the Guggenheim and the artist’s gallery. It is also described as the largest debut of new work ever staged at the museum.
That distinction matters because the Guggenheim’s architecture is not simply a neutral container for exhibitions.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s continuous spiral ramp creates an unusually physical relationship between artwork and visitor. In Simon’s installation, that structure becomes part of the narrative itself, allowing viewers to move through the project rather than encounter it as a conventional sequence of rooms.
The museum describes the work as an interactive installation, with visitors able to create their own pathways through the material.
One Federal Agent, 42 Stories
At the center of the exhibition is an unnamed federal agent.
Simon traces his life through 42 individual artworks, examining the consequences of his actions and inactions as he operated as a middleman—someone who witnessed events and collected evidence that others would interpret and use.
The story extends beyond the agent himself.
According to the exhibition materials, the effects of his work ripple outward across nations and individual lives, creating a network of victims, survivors, predators and people caught within systems of justice and bureaucracy.
This structure reflects Simon’s longstanding interest in the hidden systems that organize contemporary life.
Her work has frequently examined institutions, archives and forms of classification, using research-heavy projects to expose information that is often overlooked or deliberately obscured.
With “Father Country I Do Love You,” that investigative approach becomes more intimate.
When Research Becomes Personal
The exhibition marks a significant turning point in Simon’s practice because it incorporates personal stories in a more direct way.
At its emotional center is Simon’s father.
He worked for the U.S. government while living in Thailand and traveled to countries including Russia, Iran, Israel, China, Afghanistan and Korea. Later, he left government work and entered the arcade-game business. Simon never received the complete story of his life, and his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease made the possibility of recovering that history increasingly remote.
That unresolved family history becomes a lens through which Simon examines a much larger American narrative.
The result is not a conventional biography of her father or the federal agent at the center of the project. Instead, personal memory becomes one thread within a much larger web of institutional history.
America as a Story
The title “Father Country I Do Love You” carries an intentionally complicated emotional charge.
It combines the language of family with the language of patriotism, suggesting a relationship to the United States that is simultaneously intimate, complicated and difficult to resolve.
That tension is especially significant in 2026, as the exhibition coincides with the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Rather than presenting a straightforward celebration of national history, Simon approaches America through fragments—individual experiences, institutional systems and consequences that often remain outside official narratives.
The Guggenheim therefore becomes a place where national history is examined through personal memory.
Photography Is Only the Beginning
Although Simon is widely associated with photography, “Father Country I Do Love You” extends considerably beyond the photographic image.
The exhibition combines photographs, text, videos and sculptures into one interconnected installation.
That combination allows Simon to construct something closer to an archive than a traditional exhibition.
Images provide evidence. Text introduces context and narrative. Video expands the temporal dimension, while sculpture gives the project physical presence.
Together, the different mediums create a deliberately fragmented story.
Visitors are not simply asked to look at individual artworks. They are asked to assemble connections between them.
A Labyrinth Rather Than a Linear Narrative
The Guggenheim’s spiral architecture makes that approach particularly effective.
Rather than leading audiences through a conventional beginning, middle and end, Simon creates a constellation of stories that visitors can navigate through their own movement.
That lack of a single fixed route is important to the work’s larger idea.
History rarely arrives in perfect chronological order. Personal memories are incomplete. Government records can be fragmented. Institutional decisions can have consequences decades later and thousands of miles away.
The exhibition’s structure mirrors that uncertainty.
As visitors move through the rotunda, individual pieces become clues within a much larger narrative.
Simon’s Long Relationship With Research
The project builds on more than two decades of research-driven practice.
Simon has previously investigated subjects ranging from government collections and institutional archives to immigration, classification and systems of power. Her work frequently examines the distance between official records and the human stories contained within them.
Her earlier projects include “An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar,” which examined concealed aspects of American society and institutions, and “A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters,” a major photographic project built around complex systems of identity and inheritance.
“Father Country I Do Love You” continues that investigative tradition while turning the camera inward.
The question is no longer only what Simon can uncover about an institution.
It is also what remains unknowable within her own family.
Why This Exhibition Matters to New York
For New York, the Guggenheim exhibition represents more than another major museum opening.
The city has long served as a meeting point between contemporary art, journalism, photography and documentary practice. Simon’s work occupies all of those territories without belonging entirely to any one of them.
Her project also reflects a broader shift in contemporary art toward artists who investigate systems rather than simply represent subjects.
The work asks audiences to think about how governments create records, how individuals become part of larger historical machinery and how personal memory can complicate national narratives.
In the Guggenheim’s extraordinary architecture, those questions become physical.
The Works Will Join the Guggenheim Collection
The exhibition will have a lasting institutional impact beyond its run.
The artworks in “Father Country I Do Love You” will enter the Guggenheim’s permanent collection, which already includes three works by Simon. The museum and Hatje Cantz will also publish an accompanying artist book.
The exhibition is organized by Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media, and was initiated by former Artistic Director Nancy Spector.
That acquisition ensures that the project will remain part of the museum’s longer institutional history even after the physical installation comes down.
Exhibition Details
Exhibition: Taryn Simon | Father Country I Do Love You
Artist: Taryn Simon
Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Address: 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128
Opening: September 18, 2026
Closing: March 14, 2027
Mediums: Photography, text, video and sculpture
Scale: 42 individual artworks across the Guggenheim rotunda
Curator: Nat Trotman, Curator, Performance and Media
Conclusion
“Taryn Simon: Father Country I Do Love You” is positioned to be one of New York’s most ambitious museum exhibitions of the fall.
Its significance lies not simply in its scale, but in the way Simon turns the Guggenheim into a physical map of memory, bureaucracy, family history and American power.
At a time when the United States is looking back on 250 years of national history, Simon offers something less comfortable than a straightforward retrospective.
She offers a story built from fragments.
A federal agent. A daughter searching for the story of her father. Governments, borders and institutions. Victims and survivors. Evidence that travels across countries and generations.
And inside the Guggenheim’s spiraling architecture, those fragments become one enormous question about how a country remembers itself—and who gets to tell the story.
