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Installation view of Cynthia Daignault: Valley at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

Institute of Contemporary Art / BostonSeaport

Cynthia Daignault: Valley

Now showing27 August 2026 – 18 January 2027$20

A new multi-panel installation by the Baltimore painter, whose "long-form painting" breaks Yosemite's Tunnel View into interrelated canvases. Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser Gallery.

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Ninety-six canvases, each 16 by 24 inches, show the same view: Yosemite's Tunnel View, looking up the Merced River between granite walls to the sky. Daignault painted each one in a single sitting of eight to twelve hours, to finish the piece in under a year.

The panels hang in a grid and move through seasons and times of day. She painted from the internet's archive of photographs of the site, so it is a picture of the place and, in her words, of "its avatar". Step back and you are looking at an image search for "Yosemite", which is one of the readings she gives in the ICA's interview.

Look at the whole, then up close: she calls the single paintings "unheroic", with the weight in the days added up. It's in the Buttenwieser Gallery, included with $20 admission, free Thursdays 5 to 9 pm with an advance ticket. Curatorial assistant Meghan Clare Considine gives a gallery talk on 18 October at 2 pm.

Look for

  • The 96-panel grid of Tunnel View

    Look for the same granite valley repeated in neat rows, each canvas catching a different season, light or time of day.

  • At Picture Lake (The Painter), 2017

    A small black-and-white photograph of a painter at an easel before Mount Shuksan, with sunlight glaring off the glossy print she photographed on the dock.

Good for

  • Evening Visits
  • Nerding Out

Skip if

You want variety: all 96 canvases show the same Yosemite view.

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