Taryn Simon | Father Country I Do Love You is a major exhibition premiering a new body of work by artist Taryn Simon (b. 1975, New York). On view during the 250th anniversary of the United States, this presentation will bring together never-before-seen photographs, text, videos, and sculptures into a singular, interactive installation filling the entire rotunda. It will mark the first monographic exhibition by a photography-based artist in the rotunda and the largest debut of new work ever staged at the Guggenheim.

Nearly a decade in the making, Father Country I Do Love You (2026) traces the real life of one unnamed federal agent through 42 individual artworks. The immense project is a labyrinth of sagas in which Simon uncovers the ripple effects of her protagonist’s actions and inactions. Through duty, devotion, loss, and happenstance, the federal agent acted as a middleman, witnessing events great and small and collecting evidence for someone else to slot into the bigger picture. Everything he touched ricocheted to the outer boundaries of nations and lives he’d never know.

Simon is widely recognized for her storytelling, which directs visitors’ attention to the unseen forces shaping the worlds they inhabit. For Father Country I Do Love You, her narration recounts victims, predators, survivors, and the mechanics of justice. As the exhibition winds up the building’s ramps, visitors step into the whirlwind Simon has assembled.

This exhibition serves as a turning point in Simon’s career, integrating personal stories into her practice for the first time. Father Country I Do Love You is dedicated to Simon’s father, whose life shadows the entire project. Her father lived in Thailand and traveled to Russia, Iran, Israel, China, Afghanistan, Korea, and elsewhere while working for the U.S. government, before transitioning to a career manufacturing and selling arcade games. Simon never got his full story, and, upon his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, she realized she never would. “’But America,’ he always said, ‘was the best story on earth, if you could find someone to tell it,’” Simon recounts. Taryn Simon | Father Country I Do Love You marks a significant moment in the Guggenheim’s ongoing relationship with Simon. The artworks in the exhibition will enter the museum’s permanent collection, which already holds three other works by the artist.

About the Artist 

Taryn Simon (b. 1975, New York) is widely recognized as one of the most significant conceptual artists working with photography today. Her projects, using photography, text, video, sculpture, and performance, center on storytelling, redirecting our attention to the unseen. Simon’s exhibitions and artist books include The Innocents (2000), which traces the stories of individuals imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, questioning photography’s function as a credible eyewitness; An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), which examines the divide between public and expert access through hidden and unknown objects and sites in the U.S.; A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters (2008), for which Simon traveled the world tracing bloodlines and their related stories; Paperwork and the Will of Capital (2015), which recreates flower arrangements that stood between men signing international treaties; and An Occupation of Loss (2016) in which professional mourners enact rituals of grief, simultaneously broadcasting their lamentations from within a sculptural installation.

Her work has been exhibited widely at such venues as Cisternerne, Frederiksberg, Denmark (2024); Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York (2024); Fondazione Prada, Venice (2022); the New York Public Library (2021); Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2018, 2021); Artangel, London (2018); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2016); Park Avenue Armory, New York (2016); Albertinum, Dresden (2016); United Nations, New York (2016); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2016); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Tate Modern, London (2011); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2011); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007); and MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York (2003); and has been prominently featured in numerous biennials and triennials. Simon’s honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, the Photo London Master of Photography award, and the Innocence Project’s Award for Freedom and Justice.