Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 2015Alberto Burri Exhibition Retail
For Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting, the Guggenheim Museum’s first U.S. retrospective of the artist’s work in nearly forty years, I led the graphic design for the exhibition and translated its themes into a series of limited-edition retail objects that extended the show beyond the gallery walls.
Limited-Edition Futbol Jersey
As part of the exhibition retail collection, I designed a limited-edition sports jersey that reinterpreted Burri’s legacy through contemporary, wearable form. The piece subtly referenced Burri’s lesser-known past as a semi-professional soccer player in Italy, linking the artist’s biography to the exhibition through an unexpected medium.
The jersey was produced using a technical, fast-drying, UV-resistant fabric consistent with professional performance wear. Graphic elements were drawn directly from the Guggenheim’s architecture: the sleeves featured abstracted silhouettes of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling rotunda, integrating the museum’s iconic form into the garment itself. The result was an object that balanced institutional identity, biography, and contemporary fashion sensibility.
Released as a limited edition during the exhibition’s run, the jersey was widely embraced by visitors and staff alike and has since become a sought-after collector’s item, now primarily found through secondary resale markets and private collections.
Burlap Tote Bag
In parallel, I designed an exhibition tote bag that directly referenced Burri’s Sacchi works—paintings constructed from worn and stitched burlap sacks. The bag was produced in raw burlap and featured a graphic mark inspired by utilitarian commercial stamps traditionally used to label industrial sacks. Rather than applying Burri’s imagery superficially, the design embedded his material language into the product itself, allowing visitors to carry a tactile echo of the work.
Together, these retail objects functioned as conceptual extensions of the exhibition—design-led artifacts that bridged fine art, architecture, biography, and everyday use. As with my broader retail work, the focus was on material choice, graphic restraint, and cultural context, ensuring each item felt intentional, collectible, and inseparable from the exhibition it represented.
