Known for her environmentally based artwork, Mary Miss lives and works in New York City. She has reshaped the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design and installation art by articulating a vision of the public sphere where it is possible for an artist to address the issues of our time. Social, cultural and environmental sustainability are the focus of installations that allow the visitor to become aware of local history, ecology or other aspects of the site that have gone unnoticed.
Miss is currently developing a project to transform Broadway into the new ‘green’ corridor of New York City and has recently completed a project for the Indianapolis Museum of Art focusing on a 6-mile stretch of the White River. She is one of four artists presenting concepts for envisioning the future of Long Island City as part of the exhibition, “Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City” at the Noguchi Museum. Miss has collaborated closely with architects, planners, engineers, ecologists and public administrators on projects as diverse as a proposal to create a temporary memorial around the perimeter of Ground Zero; marking the predicted flood level in Boulder, Colorado; revealing the history of the Union Square Subway station in New York City; or turning a sewage treatment plant into a public space. A recipient of multiple awards, Miss has participated in exhibitions at the Harvard University Art Museum, Brown University Gallery, The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Architectural Association in London, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and the Des Moines Art Center.
Michael Taussig, Ph.D., is an anthropologist known for his provocative ethnographic studies and unconventional style as an academic. He was born in Australia in 1940 where he studied medicine at the University of Sydney. He earned a Ph.D. in anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is currently a professor of anthropology both at Columbia University in New York and at the European Graduate School (EGS) in Switzerland. In spite of his numerous publications in his field, especially in medical anthropology, he is most acclaimed for his commentaries on Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin, especially in relation to the idea of commodity fetishism. Michael Taussig is the author of the following books: What Color is the Sacred? (2009). Walter Benjamin’s Grave (2006). My Cocaine Museum (2004). Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in a Colombian Town (2003). Defacement (1999). Magic of the State (1997). Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (1993). The Nervous System (1992). Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (1987). The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980).
'Artists today don’t necessarily specialise in one medium but operate a form of multi-practice, whereby they move easily between video, digital photography, performance, installation or conceptual art works. Deanna Petherbridge examines the rôle and function of contemporary International drawing in this context and charts how it differs from more traditional usages and values, especially in relation to looking, recording, making and process.'
Professor Emeritus Deanna Petherbridge is presently Visiting Professor of Drawing at the University of the Arts, London and supervises PhD students. She is an artist whose practice is entirely drawing based and she has exhibited internationally and curated exhibitions on various themes including the uses of anatomy in art and currently on female stereotypes in witchcraft imagery. She is the author of The Primacy of Drawing: Histories and Theories of Practice, Yale University Press 2010 and has written and lectured internationally on issues related to drawing, sculpture and architecture.
Since 1970 Charles Simonds has created Dwelling places for an imaginary civilization “Little People” who are migrating through the streets of neighborhoods in cities throughout the world; New York , Paris, Shanghai, Berlin , London, Dublin, among others Each Dwelling is a different time and place in the history of the lives of the Little People.
Simonds has had one person retospective exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, La Caixa, Barcelona, and IVAM, Valencia .His work is in the collections of many museums, including Moma, Whitney and Guggenheim Museums in New York ; Centre Pompidou, Paris , IVAM, Valencia , Israel Museum, Jerusalem and Kunsthaus Zurich.
Barry Schwabsky is art critic of The Nation and co-editor of international reviews for Artforum. His recent publications include two collections of poetry, Book Left Open in the Rain (Black Square Editions/The Brooklyn Rail, 2009) and 12 Abandoned Poems (Kilmog Press, 2010) as well as Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting (Phaidon Press, 2011).
Ms. Dixon began her arts career in 1977, when she joined the Public Art Fund, where she served as executive director from 1980 through 1986. Among her many accomplishments at the Fund was the initiation of the New York City “Percent for Art” program. It was during that period that she met Isamu Noguchi, working with him on a Public Art Fund project. In 1986, Ms. Dixon joined the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as executive director, and in 1999 was named director of The Bronx Museum on the Arts. On April 1, 2003 she began her tenure as Director of the Noguchi Museum. Ms. Dixon has taught at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Parsons School of Design, and New York University. She is on the boards of the Public Arts Fund, Inc., Parsons School of Design, and the New York City Arts Coalition among other organizations. Jenny Dixon received an MBA in business policy from Columbia University, New York, and a BFA in painting and a BA in art education from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
From Star Trek to the Kabbalah, since the early 90s Jesse Bransford has been gleaning archaic, peripheral, and esoteric cultures for their icons, symbols and signs. Exhibited internationally, he is represented by Feature, Inc. in New York. He is an assistant professor at NYU, where he has been teaching since 2001. His work is documented at www.sevenseven.com, a website he has continuously maintained since 1997