That same year Nauman had his first solo exhibition, at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles; this was followed by more solo exhibitions in 1968 at galleries in New York and Düsseldorf. Nauman also quickly made his name abroad. Following his first participation in documenta in Kassel (1968), he showed work in groundbreaking group exhibitions such as “Anti-Illusion: Procedures / Materials” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and “When Attitudes Become Form” at Kunsthalle Bern (both 1969). In 1972–73 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art presented the first retrospective museum exhibition of Nauman’s work.

After a comprehensive presentation of his drawings—organized by the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel in 1986—in 1994 the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis initiated a wide-ranging retrospective of his oeuvre as a whole. Both exhibitions toured to museums in the United States and in Europe. Subsequent solo exhibitions included “Raw Materials” at Tate Modern in London in 2004; that same year Nauman was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture by the Japan Art Association. Nauman’s work has been shown in numerous international group exhibitions; he has participated several times in documenta in Kassel and in the Venice Biennale, where his exhibition in the American Pavilion in 2009 was awarded the Golden Lion; Nauman had previously been awarded the Golden Lion for best artist in 1999. Schaulager, Basel, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, now present “Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts,” the first comprehensive retrospective of Nauman’s work in over twenty years, which will give visitors an in-depth insight into the many, diverse facets of his art and into all the phases of his artistic career since its beginning over fifty years ago.