At what now feels somehow like a lifetime ago, on May 24, 2023 I was in New York going to galleries on the Lower East Side with my friend Carolyn Ramo and we visited Andrew Kreps Gallery. After seeing the exhibition on view, we went downstairs with Andrew to see what he had installed in his back room. I noticed this painting by Raymond Saunders, whose work I was familiar with from my time living and working in the San Francisco Bay area and teaching at California College of the Arts. I asked Andrew if Raymond had had a one person museum exhibition in the United States and his answer motivated my decision to curate one! That show opened a year ago this week at the Carnegie Museum of Art under the productive and inspired collaboration with the director, Eric Crosby and will open as my last exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art this June. Subsequent to that day nearly three years ago, the artist is represented by David Zwirner Gallery, and has also passed.

Raymond Saunders: Notes for LA, on view at David Zwirner Gallery through April 25, 2026, is a beautiful show curated by Ebony L. Haynes (About Art Podcast Episode 126) that looks not only at the artist’s paintings and drawings, but also his correspondence. At its core, About Art is about creating space to return, to reconsider, and to see more over time. Saunders embodies that sensibility—a kind of romantic attention to the world, where fragments, gestures, and ideas gather into something quietly profound.

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