Artists often respond to the contemporary world’s constant flux by tackling ideas of fluidity and exchange. This installation highlights works from the MFA’s collection made after 1960 by an intergenerational group of artists. It gives visitors multiple views into how materials and meanings ebb and flow.

Here, painters such as Ross Bleckner, Joan Mitchell, Gerhard Richter, and Andy Warhol explore the abilities of their medium to drip, stain, or seep. With urgency, their gestures build on art of centuries past that references landscapes and bodies in paint. Meanwhile, sculptors exploit metal that crumples, shimmers, or corrodes: Lynda Benglis, for example, freezes three-dimensional floes of aluminum in space. Artists like Danh Vo, John Chamberlain, and El Anatsui make use of commercial materials such as shipping cartons, automobile parts, or bottle caps to speak to the flow of peoples and exchange of merchandise.

The result is a vibrant field of art making that asks visitors to absorb the lessons of the past while reflecting on the complexity of global movement in the present.