Adrian Piper
Adrian Piper
Fusing personal experiences with an articulate political message, Adrian Piper’s work as both an artist and a philosopher has pushed her audiences to interrogate and reassess longstanding societal assumptions about gender, class, and race. Born in New York City in 1948, Piper received an A.A. at the School of Visual Arts in 1969, a B.A. at the City College of New York, and a PhD at Harvard University in 1981. Piper’s work in philosophy has centered around the subject of ethics, particularly as delineated with the writings of Immanuel Kant. At Georgetown University in 1987, the artist became the first African American woman to receive tenure in the field of philosophy. She continues to pursue her academic career as a Kant scholar.
In the late 1960s, while still in art school, Piper took a job working for Sol LeWitt. Greatly influenced by LeWitt’s emphasis on the conceptual aspect of art making, Piper began to experiment with a series of radical, politically-charged performances that received a great deal of attention for their fearless and confrontational treatment of sensitive subject matter. For Mythic Being, 1973-75, the artist marched through the streets of New York City dressed as a man, complete with Afro and bushy mustache, bellowing out passages from her own journals. Funk Lessons, 1982-84, comprised a sequence of lectures teaching predominantly white audiences about the history of the musical genre, followed by dance instruction. And for what is perhaps her best known series of performances, My Calling (Card) # 1: A Reactive Guerilla Performance for Dinners and Cocktail Parties, 1986-1990, the artist handed out printed notes to people who had unwittingly (and unthinkingly) offended Piper, including one featuring the powerful opening line: “Dear Friend: I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark.”
Piper has been awarded numerous significant fellowships, including the Guggenheim, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Andrew W. Mellon. The artist was given a Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and a Venice Biennale Golden Lion Award for Best Artist in 2015. The artist’s work is part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Her seventh traveling retrospective, “Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965-2016,” originated at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, in the spring of 2018.
Selected Works
Video
Adrian Piper Exhibition
September 15, 2017
Exhibitions
Museum Exhibitions
Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection
May 24, 2019 - January 12, 2020
JR – Adrian Piper – Ray Johnson
April 25 - August 5, 2019
Adrian Piper: Concepts and Intuitions, 1965-2016
October 7, 2018 - January 6, 2019
Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974 - 1995
February 8 - September 3, 2018
Plato in L.A.: Contemporary Artists’ Visions
April 18 - September 3, 2018
Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, 1965–2016
March 31, 2017 - July 22, 2018
Selected Press
Artforum | ON THE TUILERIES SLAVE MEMORIAL JURY “IMPASSE”
April 12, 2021
The Wall Street Journal | New York City Museums Become a Haven for Art-Loving Locals
January 26, 2021
ArtReview | Adrian Piper wins Kaiserring award
January 25, 2021
Elephant | Image of the Day
January 3, 2021
Metropolis | Melbourne’s NGV Triennial Ponders the Distant Past and a Post-Pandemic Future
December 17, 2020
Herald Sun | Everything you need to know about the NGV Triennial exhibition
December 10, 2020
Apollo Magazine | I’m Not a Nice Girl!
January 14, 2020
ARTnews | The Most Important Works of the 2010s: Favorite Artworks That Didn’t Make the List
November 28, 2019
The Art Newspaper | Dissecting a gallery in a remade MoMA
November 6, 2019
Art News | 15 Surprising Works at the New MoMA, from Early Net Art to a Full-Scale Kitchen
October 18, 2019
Observer | Six Artists Scrutinized the Gaps and Hidden Gems of the Guggenheim’s Collection. Here’s What They Found.
May 28, 2019
Artnet | Here Are the 10 Absolute Best Works of Art We Saw Around the World in 2018
December 27, 2018
The New Yorker | 2018 in Review: The Year in Art
December 27, 2018
ARTNews | The Year in Screens—With 3D Teddy Bears, Absconded Identities, Violent Comedy, and More
December 26, 2018
Artnet | 16 More Globetrotting Art Aficionados Tell Us About the Most Memorable Shows They Saw in 2018
December 21, 2018
ARTNews | The Year in Books—Under the Covers, Between the Lines
December 20, 2018
Artforum | In LA, Women Artists Exceed Men in 2018 Museum Solo Shows
December 18, 2018
Hyperallergic | Best of 2018: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows
December 18, 2018
Artsy | The Most Influential Artists of 2018
December 17, 2018
Los Angeles Times | Best art of 2018: Jasper Johns, Renaissance nudes, 'Made in L.A.' and a sleeper hit at LACMA
December 11, 2018
New York Times | The Best Art of 2018
December 5, 2018
Artforum | Johanna Fateman: Top 10 of 2018
December 1, 2018
Culture Type | Power 100: Artist Kerry James Marshall Ranked No. 2 Most Influential Person in Contemporary Art World
November 11, 2018
ArtReview | ArtReview Power 100
November 9, 2018
Hyperallergic | Adrian Piper in Her Own Words
November 9, 2018
Los Angeles Times | The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Art in the Age of Rising White Supremacy
November 9, 2018
Los Angeles Times | Review: The artwork of Adrian Piper makes a stern proclamation: 'Everything will be taken away'
October 13, 2018
Hyperallergic | Considering Adrian Piper’s Art Alongside 50 Years of Social Change
October 2, 2018
Frieze | ‘I Still Do Believe They Want Me Dead’: An Interview With Adrian Piper
September 10, 2018
The New York Times | Adrian Piper Speaks! (for Herself)
July 5, 2018
Artforum | Reality Check
July 1, 2018
The New York Times | Adrian Piper’s Show at MoMA is the Largest Ever for a Living Artist. Why Hasn’t She Seen It?
June 27, 2018
The New York Times | Adrian Piper: The Thinking Canvas
April 19, 2018
The New York Times | A Solo Show for Adrian Piper
September 15, 2017
Artnet | The 7 Best Artworks on Offer at EXPO Chicago 2017
September 14, 2017
Photograph | Adrian Piper
August 22, 2017
Artnet | The 10 Most Extraordinary Artworks at Art Basel Unlimited 2017
June 13, 2017
Artforum | Just Between Friends
May 3, 2017
More Information
Artists
Alexander Calder
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Chung Sang-Hwa
Francesco Clemente
Dan Colen
Willem de Kooning
Lucio Fontana
Gego
Yves Klein
Jutta Koether
Seung-taek Lee
Robert Motherwell
Senga Nengudi
Roman Opalka
Adrian Piper
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Carol Rama
Martial Raysse
Peter Regli
Germaine Richier
Karin Schneider
Joel Shapiro
Kazuo Shiraga
Pierre Soulages
Pat Steir
Tu Hongtao
Günther Uecker
Zao Wou-Ki
Specializing in Works By
- Terry Adkins
- Vincenzo Agnetti
- Carl Andre
- Diane Arbus
- Jean Arp
- Francis Bacon
- John Baldessari
- Jean-Michel Basquiat
- Alighiero Boetti
- Lee Bontecou
- Louise Bourgeois
- Mark Bradford
- Constantin Brancusi
- Cecily Brown
- Alberto Burri
- Sérgio Camargo
- Vija Celmins
- John Chamberlain
- Eduardo Chillida
- Lygia Clark
- George Condo
- Joseph Cornell
- Gino de Dominicis
- Nicolas de Staël
- Richard Diebenkorn
- PETER DOIG
- Jean Dubuffet
- Sam Francis
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Lucian Freud
- Alberto Giacometti
- Gilbert & George
- Johannes Girardoni
- Sonia Gomes
- Julio González
- Arshile Gorky
- Adolph Gottlieb
- Mark Grotjahn
- Philip Guston
- David Hammons
- Keith Haring
- Damien Hirst
- David Hockney
- Thomas Houseago
- Jasper Johns
- Donald Judd
- Ellsworth Kelly
- Anselm Kiefer
- Martin Kippenberger
- Franz Kline
- Jeff Koons
- Jannis Kounellis
- Lee Krasner
- Barbara Kruger
- Yayoi Kusama
- Gerald Laing
- Fernand Léger
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Liza Lou
- Tsuyoshi Maekawa
- René Magritte
- Piero Manzoni
- Brice Marden
- Agnes Martin
- Henri Matisse
- Fausto Melotti
- Joel Mesler
- Eleanore Mikus
- Joan Miró
- Joan Mitchell
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Piet Mondrian
- Paulo Monteiro
- Henry Moore
- François Morellet
- Bruce Nauman
- Barnett Newman
- Albert Oehlen
- Claes Oldenburg
- Francis Picabia
- Pablo Picasso
- Lari Pittman
- Sigmar Polke
- Jackson Pollock
- Richard Prince
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Charles Ray
- Ad Reinhardt
- Gerhard Richter
- Jean Paul Riopelle
- Mark Rothko
- Ed Ruscha
- Robert Ryman
- Salvatore Scarpitta
- Thomas Schütte
- Richard Serra
- Cindy Sherman
- Jeff Sonhouse
- Clyfford Still
- Rudolf Stingel
- Mark Tansey
- Mickalene Thomas
- James Turrell
- Cy Twombly
- Andy Warhol
- Tom Wesselmann
- Franz West
- Jonas Wood
- Christopher Wool