Miss America

Gratin, in association with Elizabeth Leach Gallery and collaboration with Mitchell Algus, is pleased to announce Miss America, the first solo exhibition of work by Ed Bereal in New York, opening September 3, 2025. Described as “The Most Important Activist-Artist You Don't Know” by Alex V. Cipolle on Hyperallergic, Bereal has engaged with a vast range of social, political and environmental issues across a career spanning seven decades. The works on view reflect formative experiences gained as an art student at Chouinard Art Institute in the 1950s and 60s, a young artist living and working in the greater Watts area during the 1965 riots, and a documentarian covering geopolitical shifts across the globe in the 1990s.

Miss America brings together works made between 1958 and 2003, beginning with three confidently rendered self-portraits dating from the late 1950s which demonstrate Bereal’s early strength in draftsmanship. These drawings, not intended as exhibition drawings, provide insight into Bereal's thought process when developing a new idea or image. Collages from the late 1980s and early 1990s combine traditional symbols of America with darker elements which seem to lurk just below the surface. Central to the exhibition is Bereal’s Miss America figure, with her crown of nails, leering grin and mechanical limbs. Miss America reflects the artist’s view of the parts of American life that aren't embodied by the work of Norman Rockwell or Walt Disney, and the experiences of the marginalized and repressed. Including elements of Bereal’s drawing practice and early assemblage works in which he combines disparate symbols and elements that depict the America he experienced, Bereal’s Miss America turns the traditional conception of “Miss America” on her head, drawing attention to the realities of life for most Americans.