MassArt Art MuseumMission Hill / Longwood

Banu Cennetoğlu: right?

Now showing30 September 2026 – 28 February 2027Free

Articles 25 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spelled out in gold Mylar letter balloons, which deflate over the run of the show. Stephen D. Paine Gallery.

Exhibition website

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On now All of October 2026

The letter C turned up late. While Banu Cennetoğlu was installing, every package labelled C arrived holding a B, so student assistants at helium tanks worked around the gaps on marked-up printouts of the text. The finished piece spells out Articles 25 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the rights to a decent standard of living and to an education, in gold Mylar letter balloons.

You walk in under extra-large letters bundled into dense clusters, tied with white cotton cord to stools and weights and floating up to the ceiling. Robin Hauck, reviewing it for Misstropolis, assures readers this isn't a Kardashian birthday party and calls it "a portrait of time itself". The balloons lose helium from the moment they're full, and over the months the letters bend, wrinkle and lean on each other.

Hauck's advice is to visit more than once. It's free with no ticket, upstairs in the Paine Gallery, open Thursdays until 8pm and Friday to Sunday until 5pm.

Editor's pick

Two articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, spelled out in gold Mylar letter balloons tied to stools and weights, slowly deflating. Misstropolis called it "a portrait of time itself".

Look for

The gold letter clusters
Look up: Articles 25 and 26 hang as dense bouquets of extra-large gold Mylar letters, packed too tightly to read as sentences.
The white cotton cord
Look closely at the neat lines of white string binding each balloon cluster to the stools and weights on the floor.
The slow sag
The letters deflate across the run, so later in the show they bend, wrinkle and lean on their fuller neighbours.