The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg is proud to announce House Show: Power, Spectacle, and Pro Wrestling, opening in Fall 2027. Occupying over 5,000 square feet of gallery space and featuring more than 50 works, House Show (a term which describes a non-televised professional wrestling match) brings together artists and performers whose work engages the theatricality, intensity, and cultural complexity of the wrestling world.
Co-curated by Katherine Pill, MFA St. Pete’s Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Adam Abdalla, founder of Orange Crush: The Journal of Art & Wrestling, the exhibition spans painting, sculpture, video, photography, and performance from the 1960s to the present. Drawing on wrestling's unique blend of fiction and reality, House Show uses the ring as a lens through which to examine broader cultural themes—including the construction of identity, performance of gender and sexuality, and the aesthetics of ritualized violence and care. At the heart of the exhibition is the concept of kayfabe, the long-standing wrestling term for the unspoken agreement between performers and audience to treat the scripted as sincere. This framework offers a timely reflection on how we navigate authenticity in contemporary life—across social media, politics, and everyday performance. Within this context, House Show highlights how wrestling dramatizes not just conflict, but empathy, collaboration, and trust.
FUNDED IN PART BY THE CITY OF ST. PETERSBURG AND THE MARGARET ACHESON STUART SOCIETY
MEDIA PARTNER: WUSF: YOUR HOME FOR NPR / WSMR CLASSICAL
Images:
Shaun Leonardo, Portrait of El C., 2007. Photo by Mariana Bersten. Courtesy of the Artist.
Shaun Leonardo, El Conquistador vs. The Invisible Man: The Homecoming (performance at Queens Museum), 2007. Photo by Ivan Monforte & Henry Chance. Courtesy of the Artist.
Thekla Kaischauri, Women at the Garden, 2024. Courtesy of the Artist.