The Bruce Museum announces “Georges Braque: Tactile Space,” a focused exhibition exploring the pioneering French artist’s lifelong fascination with the sensory experience of form and space. On view Dec. 20, 2025 –Aug. 2, 2026, the exhibition is organized by the Bruce Museum and curated by Jordan Hillman, assistant curator of art.
Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963) once confessed the urge “to touch a thing and not merely see it,” an impulse that shaped his decades-long exploration of what he called “tactile space.” Defined by Braque as “the space that separates us from objects, as opposed to visual space, which separates objects from one another,” this concept informed the radical experiments he undertook with Pablo Picasso in the early 20th century. Their collaboration gave rise to Cubism—a movement characterized by the compression of multiple perspectives, collaged elements (papier collé) and the fragmentation of forms into geometric planes. Through these methods, Braque sought “to get as close as possible to the objects as the painting allowed.”
“While Braque developed his own style of Cubism both independently and alongside Picasso, his contributions to the history of art have been largely overlooked,” explains Jordan Hillman, assistant curator of art. “This exhibition aims to recover what was so radical about Braque’s art, namely its insistent materiality and tactility. The paintings and sculptures on view from the Régis Krampf Collection—nearly a third of which have never been exhibited—highlight the various ways in which Braque rendered space and depth tangible. We are thrilled to be able to share these rare and highly original works with our audiences at the Bruce.”
“Georges Braque: Tactile Space” traces the evolution of Braque’s treatment of tactility, materiality and space, beginning with his Cubist period (1908–1914) and extending across the next five decades of his career. Expanding Cubism’s move away from traditional illusions of depth, Braque began blending sand and other materials into his pigments, applying paint in textured brushstrokes that emphasized the physical surface of his works. He experimented with scale, pattern and perspective, tilting compositions dramatically forward to bridge the gap between the artwork and the viewer’s own space. Later, Braque carried this investigation into three dimensions, translating his painterly fragmentation into sculptural form in bronze.
Drawn entirely from the Régis Krampf Collection, this exhibition features nearly 40 works that reveal Braque’s pivotal role in redefining modern visual experience. His tactile innovations anticipated the preoccupation with surface, material and spatial perception that has come to define 20th and 21st-century art.
In “Georges Braque: Tactile Space,” in-gallery interactives invite visitors to test Braque’s compression of three-dimensional space into two dimensions, as well as to feel some of the textures—both real and depicted—that he incorporated into his canvases for themselves. The show’s curator will also deliver a lecture on January 13, 2026, further addressing how Braque’s innovative artistic approaches activate viewers’ sense of touch as much as sight.
Exhibition Details
- Title: “Georges Braque: Tactile Space. Selections from the Régis Krampf Collection”
- Venue: Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, CT
- Dates: Dec, 20, 2025-Aug. 2, 2026
- Curator: Jordan Hillman, Assistant Curator of Art
- Organized by: Bruce Museum
- Collection: Works from the Régis Krampf Collection
Programming
- Experiences at the Bruce: Seeing Touch: Georges Braque’s Tactile Spaces
Jan. 13, 2025, 2:00-3:30
Assistant curator of art, Jordan Hillman, will give a lecture on the works of Georges Braque. - Bruce Beginnings: Cubist Still Life
Feb. 17, 10-10:45 and 11-11:45
Feb. 18, 3-3:45 - Bruce Beginnings Junior: Apples and Bananas: Still Life Fun
Feb. 18, 10-10:45
