Common Sense

Exhibition exploring collective knowledge, vernacular wisdom, and artistic responses to shared experience.

Why go

The exhibition draws a direct line between Paine's 18th-century arguments for independence and nine contemporary works addressing race, community, and power—offering art as a counterpoint to political fragmentation in the present moment.

What to expect

Works spanning collage, printmaking, sculpture, and text-based art by artists including Kara Walker, Hank Willis Thomas, Charles Gaines, and Paul Ramírez Jonas, displayed alongside facsimiles of Paine's Common Sense and The American Crisis in the Beaux-Arts Court.

Things to know

• Organized by Catherine Morris, Department Chair and Sackler Senior Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and Kimberli Gant,
• Features newly commissioned text-based works by Donald Moffett and Maynard Monrow.
• Part of Drawing America: US@250, marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
• Included in general admission.
• Located in Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor.
• Runs May 1–November 8, 2026.

Plan your visit

Included in general admission. Located in the Beaux-Arts Court on the 3rd Floor. Related programming includes Weekend Art: Summer Print Jam on June 20, 1–4 pm.