Rose Art Museum Commissions Mark Bradford to Represent U.S. at the 2017 Venice Biennale
Photo credit: Mark Bradford, Father, You Have Murdered Me. 2012. Purchased with funds from Mortimer & Sara Hays Acquisition Fund and the Rose Art Museum Special Fund.
In another win for the state of Massachusetts, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University has commissioned artist Mark Bradford to represent the United States at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Commissioned and co-curated by Christopher Bedford, the Director of the Rose Art Museum and Curator-at- Large for the Rose Art Museum, Katy Siegel, Mark Bradford’s selection to represent the US in Venice is the second consecutive commission from a Massachusetts’ institution. The 56th Venice Biennale was commissioned to performance and video art pioneer Joan Jonas by the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mark Bradford will create a new site-specific installation for the U.S Pavilion in Venice, Italy to be on view May 13-November 26, 2017.
“The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is honored to present the work of Mark Bradford as the official United States Representative to the 2017 Venice Biennale,” commented Christopher Bedford, the Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum. “As the leading American abstract painter of his generation and a vigorous advocate for the interests of under-represented urban communities in the U.S. and beyond, Bradford creates work that embodies art’s capacity to both inspire wonder and catalyze enduring social change. Similarly, the Rose’s renowned collection of postwar art is rooted in a commitment to material invention and expanding knowledge through culture, while Brandeis’s investment in social justice as a core value permeates the work of every teaching and research unit of the University. It is with the greatest pleasure that we announce our collaboration with Mark Bradford: no artist could be better aligned with the character of our institution or better positioned to represent the United States in the 21st century,” added Bedford.
A recipient of a 2009 MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Award, Mark Bradford was born in 1961 and lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2010, Christopher Bedford organized the critically acclaimed exhibit, Mark Bradford, a large-scale survey of Bradford’s work at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, before traveling to the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Mark Bradford’s work has been widely exhibited and has been included in group shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014), Whitney Museum of American Art (2013), the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), Seoul Biennial (2010), the Carnegie International (2008), São Paulo Biennial (2006), and Whitney Biennial (2006).
Congratulations to the Rose Art Museum and Mark Bradford!