Exhibitions
Since her first solo exhibition in 1958, Martin's work has been the subject of more than 85 solo shows and two retrospectives including the survey, Agnes Martin, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, which later traveled to Jamaica (1992–1994) and Agnes Martin: Paintings and Drawings 1974–1990 organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, with subsequent venues in France and Germany (1991–1992). In 1998, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico mounted Agnes Martin Works on Paper. In 2002, the Menil Collection, Houston, mounted Agnes Martin: The Nineties and Beyond. That same year, the Harwood Museum of Art at the University of New Mexico, Pandora, organized Agnes Martin: Paintings from 2001, as well as a symposium honoring Martin on the occasion of her 90th birthday.
In addition to participating in an international array of group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (1997, 1980, 1976), the Whitney Biennial (1995, 1977), and Documenta, Kassel, Germany (1972), Martin has been the recipient of multiple honors including the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of the Women's Caucus for Art of the College Art Association (2005); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992); the Governor's Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts given by Governor Gary Johnson, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1998); the National Medal of Arts awarded by President Bill Clinton and the National Endowment for the Arts (1998); the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement by the College Art Association (1998); the Golden Lion for Contribution to Contemporary Art at the Venice Biennale (1997); the Oskar Kokoschka Prize awarded by the Austrian government (1992); the Alexej von Jawlensky Prize awarded by the city of Wiesbaden, Germany (1991); and election to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York (1989).
Exhibitions continue to be mounted since her death in 2004, including Agnes Martin: Closing the Circle, Early and Late from February 10, 2006 to March 4, 2006 at Pace Gallery. From August 2006 to March 5, 2007 Dia Beacon exhibited Agnes Martin: A Field of Vision: Paintings From the 1980's which displayed 18 paintings.
Other exhibitions have been held in New York, Zurich, London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Cambridge (England), Aspen, Albuquerque, British Columbia in Canada. In 2012, The Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico, University of New Mexico launched a museum-wide exhibition titled Agnes Martin Before the Grid in honor of her centennial year. This exhibit was the first to focus on the work and life of Martin prior to 1960. The exhibit focused on many, never seen before, works Martin created at Columbia, Coentis Slip and early years in New Mexico. It was also the first to consider Martin's struggle with mental health, sexuality and Martin's important relationship with Ad Reinhardt. In 2015, Tate Modern ran a retrospective of her life and career from the 1950s until her last work in 2004, which will travel to other museums after the show in London. At the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Martin was featured in the exhibition Reductive Minimalism: Women Artists in Dialogue, 1960–2014 which examined the two generations of Minimalist art side by side, from October 2014 through January 2015. The exhibition included Anne Truitt, Mary Corse, and contemporary artists Shirazeh Houshiary and Tomma Abts.
She was also featured in White on the White: Color, Scene, and Space in Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. From October 2015 through April 2016, Martin was exhibited in Opening the Box: Unpacking Minimalism at The George Economou Collection in Athens, Greece alongside Dan Flavin and Donald Judd. From 2015 to 2017, she had numerous solo exhibitions, some being at the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen Colorado, Tate Modern in London, K20, Kunstsammlung Nordhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side, at the Palace of Governors, The New Mexico Museum of History in Santa Fe. She has featured in the ongoing exhibition Intuitive Progression at the Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, New York from February 2017 to August 2017.
In 2016, a retrospective exhibition of her works from the 1950s through 2004 was presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 2016, she was also featured in the Dansaekhwa and Minimalism Exhibition at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles and earlier in the year in the show titled Aspects of Minimalism: Selections from East End Collections at the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York.
She was also featured in Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction at The Museum of Modern Art in Midtown, New York which shined a light on women artists who worked post World War II and before the start of the Feminist movement. The exhibition went from April 2017 to August 2017 and featured Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell, Lygia Clark, Gego, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, and Eva Hesse.
In 2018, the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited her work in Agnes Martin: The Untroubled Mind/Works from the Daniel W. Dietrich II Collection.
Martin's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.
Martin was a featured artist in the 2024 exhibition 'Friend, A Survey of Op-Art and Minimalism' at the Ki Smith Gallery. The exhibition benefitted Sentebale, a Lesotho based charity co-founded by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho. Martin exhibited alongside Bridget Riley and Frank Stella, among others.
From April 4 to July 3, 2026, Dia Beacon exhibited Agnes Martin: Painting is not making paintings, featuring works created during the breath of her career and drew primarily on the DIA's collection.
