Michael Richards: Free F’All

Dozens of nails run through the pilot's body, from the collarbone to mid-thigh and down both arms. His eyes are closed and he wears a flight cap, goggles and a parachute pack. Michael Richards cast the six-foot figure from a mold of his own body in 1997. Walk round him: they go through his hands and feet as well.

It is one sculpture, the only Richards in the museum's collection, from a series he spent nearly ten years on about the Tuskegee Airmen, Black pilots who fought in World War II in a segregated military. The museum reads the nails two ways: as the Kongolese nkisi nkondi, a guardian figure woken by each nail, and as Saint Sebastian's arrows. Richards died on September 11, 2001, in his North Tower studio.

It stands in the first-floor Rubin Lobby, so see it on the way to a bigger show. It is included in general admission, pay what you can (suggested $20, free for 19 and under), through June 6, 2027.