MICHAEL BRENSON:
CRITIC-TEACHER-CURATOR
Brenson has played several roles in the art world in the past
twenty-five years: author and critic, teacher, curator, editor,
and conscience of the art establishment.
AUTHOR Brenson is working on a biography of
David Smith, which will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
in 2008. A collection of his post-New York Times writings, Acts
of Engagement: Writings on Art, Criticism and Institutions, 19932002,
is being published in August 2004 by Rowman & Littlefield.
Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress and the Place of
the Visual Artist in America was published by The New Press in
2001. With Mary Jane Jacob he edited Conversations at the Castle:
Changing Audiences and Contemporary Art (MIT Press 1998). Brenson
has written extensively about pressing artistic and cultural
issues—including the changing nature of museums, the idea
of quality in art, the changing shape and experience of public
art, public funding of the arts in America, and the crisis of
the National Endowment for the Arts. His writings have appeared
in such journals as Artforum, Art in America, Art Journal, American
Art, Sculpture, Journal of Art, Art Criticism, and Art & Auction.
He has contributed important essays to exhibition catalogues
on sculptors Magdalena Abakanowicz, Elizabeth Catlett, Mel Edwards,
Alberto Giacometti, Gillian Jagger, Luis Jimenez, Maya Lin, Juan
Muñoz, David Smith, Martin Puryear, and Ursula von Rydingsvard.
TEACHER Brenson taught art history at the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro, English at The American School
of Paris in St. Cloud, and writing practicums and a seminar on
the museum exhibition catalogue at the Center for Curatorial
Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y, where he was
an associate professor in 20002001. He has been visiting
critic at Yale University and the University of Texas at Austin.
CURATOR Brenson has curated exhibitions of
works by Magdalena Abakanowicz (Queens' P.S. 1 Museum),
Ryoji Koie (Manhattan's Gallery at Takashimaya), and Jonathan
Silver (Manhattan's Sculpture Center).
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