Bowdoin College Museum of Art acquires work by LJ Roberts

Hales is pleased to share that LJ Roberts, T4T-AM (Motor City Mayhem), 2025, has been acquired by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, through a Museum Purchase from the Jane H. and Charles E. Parker, Jr. Art Acquisition Fund (2025.56).

 

The work was exhibited at Hales New York in 2025 as part of Roberts’ debut solo exhibition at the gallery, The Queer Mechanix of the Lands Currently Referred to as the U.S. & Canada Before & During the 54th Year of the Stonewall Era. The exhibition presented a cartography of queer and trans auto mechanic shops across the United States and Canada, realised through large-scale textile works, prints, and sound.

 

T4T-AM (Motor City Mayhem) depicts a 1980 Pontiac Trans-Am—manufactured in Detroit in the year of the artist’s birth—and exemplifies Roberts’ use of hand-stitched embroidery to intertwine personal history with broader narratives that celebrate community, labor, and economic autonomy.