Julie Mehretu (born November 28, 1970) is an
Ethiopian American
Ethiopian Americans are Americans of People of Ethiopia, Ethiopian descent, as well as individuals of American and Ethiopian ancestry.
History
In 1919, an official Ethiopian goodwill mission was sent to the United States to congratulate the Al ...
contemporary
visual artist
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...
, known for her multi-layered paintings of abstracted landscapes on a large scale. Her paintings, drawings, and prints depict the cumulative effects of urban sociopolitical changes.
Mehretu is included in
''Time''s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Early life and education
Mehretu was born in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Addis Ababa (; am, አዲስ አበባ, , new flower ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, t ...
in 1970, the first child of an Ethiopian college professor of geography and a Jewish American
Montessori
The Montessori method of education involves children's natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods. A Montessori classroom places an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing real-world skills. It emphasizes indepen ...
teacher. They fled the country in 1977 to escape political turmoil and moved to
East Lansing, Michigan
East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. Most of the city lies within Ingham County, Michigan, Ingham County with a smaller portion extending north into Clinton County, Michigan, Clinton County. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 ...
, for her father's teaching position in economic geography at
Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
.
[Calvin Tomkins (March 29, 2010).]
Big Art, Big Money: Julie Mehretu's 'Mural' for Goldman Sachs
. ''The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
''. Retrieved 2017-08-04. A graduate of
East Lansing High School
East Lansing High School is a public high school in the city of East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It is managed by the East Lansing Public Schools district.
The school is located about a mile north of the Michigan State University campus. ...
, Mehretu received a Bachelor of Arts degree from
Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo College, also known as Kalamazoo, K College, KC or simply K, is a private liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Founded in 1833 by Baptist ministers as the Michigan and Huron Institute, Kalamazoo is the oldest private college in ...
in
Kalamazoo, Michigan, and did a junior year abroad at
Cheikh Anta Diop University
Cheikh Anta Diop University (french: Université Cheikh Anta Diop or UCAD), also known as the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, is a university in Dakar, Senegal. It is named after the Senegalese physicist, historian and anthropologist Chei ...
(UCAD) in
Dakar, Senegal
Dakar ( ; ; wo, Ndakaaru) (from :wo:daqaar, daqaar ''tamarind''), is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Senegal, largest city of Senegal. The city of Dakar proper has a population of 1,030,594, whereas the population of the Dakar ...
, then attended the
Rhode Island School of Design
The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...
in
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1997.
Mehretu shares her studio with her partner, artist
Jessica Rankin. Her mother-in-law is author and poet
Lily Brett
Lily Brett (born Lilijahne Brajtsztajn 5 September 1946, Feldafing displaced persons camp, Bavaria, Germany) is an Australian novelist, essayist and poet. She lived in North Carlton and then Elwood/Caulfield (suburbs of Melbourne) from 1948 to ...
.
Art career
Mehretu's canvases incorporate elements from technical drawings of various urban buildings and linear illustrations of urban efficiency, including city grids and weather charts. The pieces do not contain any formal, consistent sense of depth, instead of utilizing multiple points of view and perspective ratios to construct flattened re-imaginings of city life.
[Julie Mehretu](_blank)
White Cube, London. Her drawings are similar to her paintings, with many layers forming complex, abstracted images of social interaction on a global scale.
[Julie Mehretu — New Drawings, February 1 – March 16, 2008](_blank)
Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
. The relatively smaller-scale drawings are opportunities for exploration made during the time between paintings.
''Emperial Construction, Istanbul'' (2004) exemplifies Mehretu's use of layers in a city's history.
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
lettering and forms that reference Arabic script scatter around the canvas.
In ''Stadia I, II'', and ''III'' (2004) Mehretu conveys the cultural importance of the
stadium
A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...
through marks and layers of flat shape. Each ''Stadia'' contains an architectural outline of a stadium, abstracted flags of the world, and references to corporate logos.
''Mogamma: A Painting in Four Parts'' (2012), the collective name for four monumental canvases that were included in
dOCUMENTA (13), relates to 'Al-Mogamma', the name of the all purpose government building in
Tahrir Square
Tahrir Square ( ar, ميدان التحرير ', , English language, English: Liberation Square), also known as "Martyr Square", is a major public town square in downtown Cairo, Egypt. The square has been the location and focus for political dem ...
, Cairo which was both instrumental in the 2011 revolution and architecturally symptomatic of Egypt's post-colonial past. The word 'Mogamma', however, means 'collective' in Arabic and historically, has been used to refer to a place that shares a mosque, a synagogue and a church and is a place of multi faith. A later work, ''The Round City, Hatshepsut'' (2013) contains architectural traces of
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
, Iraq itself – its title referring to the historical name given to the city in ancient maps. Another painting, ''Insile'' (2013) built up from a photo image of Believers' Palace amid civilian buildings, activates its surface with painterly ink gestures, blurring and effacing the ruins beneath.
While best known for large-scale abstract paintings, Mehretu has experimented with prints since graduate school at the
Rhode Island School of Design
The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...
, where she was enrolled in the painting and printmaking program in the mid-1990s. Her exploration of printmaking began with etching. She has completed collaborative projects at professional printmaking studios across America, among them Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis, Crown Point Press in San Francisco,
Gemini G.E.L.
Gemini G.E.L., formally Gemini Ltd., is an artists‘ workshop, exhibition space, and publisher of limited edition Printmaking, prints and sculptures, located at 8365 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, California.
History
Gemini Ltd. was founded in ...
in Los Angeles, and Derrière L'Etoile Studios and Burnet Editions in New York City.
Mehretu was a resident of the CORE Program, Glassell School of Art,
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1997–98) and the Artist-in-Residence Program at the
Studio Museum in Harlem (2001). During a residency at the
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
, Minneapolis, in 2003, she worked with thirty high school girls from East Africa. In 2007, she led a monthlong residency program with 40 art students from Detroit public high schools.
[Hilarie M. Sheets (November 11, 2007)]
Industrial Strength in the Motor City
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''. In the spring of 2007 she was the Guna S. Mundheim Visual Arts Fellow at the
American Academy in Berlin
The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and Germany ...
.
[Fellow: Julie Mehretu](_blank)
American Academy in Berlin
The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and Germany ...
, Berlin.
During her residency in Berlin, Mehretu was commissioned to create seven paintings by the
Deutsche Guggenheim
The Deutsche Guggenheim was an art museum in Berlin, Germany, open from 1997 to 2013.Kuhla, Karoline"Final Exhibition: The Guggenheim's Farewell to Berlin" ''Spiegel Online'', November 15, 2012 It was located in the ground floor of the Deutsche B ...
; titled ''Grey Area'' (2008–2009), the series explores the urban landscape of Berlin as a historical site of generation and destruction.
The painting ''Vanescere'' (2007), a black-and-white composition that depicts what appears to be a maelstrom of ink and acrylic marks, some of which are sanded away on the surface of the linen support, propelled a layering process of subtraction in the ''Grey Area'' series. Parts of ''Fragment'' (2008–09) and ''Middle Grey'' (2007–09) feature this erasing technique. Another in the series that was painted in Berlin, ''Berliner Plätze'' (2008–09), holds a phantom presence of overlapped outlines of nineteenth-century German buildings that float as a translucent mass in the frame. The art historian Sue Scott has this to say of the ''Grey Area'' series: "In these somber, simplified tonal paintings, many of which were based on the facades of beautiful nineteenth-century buildings destroyed in World War II, one gets the sense of buildings in the process of disappearing, much like the history of the city she was depicting."
As Mehretu explains in Ocula Magazine, 'The whole idea of 20th-century progress and ideas of futurity and modernity have been shattered, in a way. All of this is what is informing how I am trying to think about space.'
Other activities
*
Americans for the Arts
Americans for the Arts is a nonprofit organization whose primary focus is advancing the arts in the United States. With offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City, with more than 50 years of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to repr ...
, Member of the Artists Committee
Recognition
In 2000, Mehretu was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. She was the recipient of the 2001 Penny McCall Award. On September 20, 2005, she was named as one of the 2005 recipients of the
MacArthur Fellowship
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...
, often referred to as the "genius grant."
In 2007, while completing a residency at the
American Academy in Berlin
The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and Germany ...
, Julie Mehretu received the 15th commission of the
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
and
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1937 by philanthropist Solomon R. Guggenheim and his long-time art advisor, artist Hilla von Rebay. The foundation is a leading institution for the collection, preserv ...
. The body of work she created, ''Grey Area'', was composed of six large-scale paintings, completed between 2007 and 2009 in a studio in Berlin.
In 2013, Mehretu was awarded the Barnett and Annalee Newman Award and in 2015 Mehretu received the US Department of State Medal of Arts from Secretary of State
John Kerry
John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who currently serves as the first United States special presidential envoy for climate. A member of the Forbes family and the Democratic Party (Unite ...
.
In 2020, ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine included Mehretu in its list of the
100 most influential people
''Time'' 100 (often stylized as ''TIME'' 100) is an annual listicle of the 100 most influential people in the world, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, po ...
.
Notable works in public collections
*''Blue Field'' (1997),
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
*''Babel Unleashed'' (2001),
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
,
Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
*''Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation'' (2001),
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission.
Overview ...
,
Bentonville, Arkansas
Bentonville is the tenth-largest city in Arkansas, United States and the county seat of Benton County. The city is centrally located in the county with Rogers adjacent to the east. The city is the birthplace of and world headquarters locatio ...
*''Empirical Construction, Istanbul'' (2003),
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
,
New York
*''Entropia (review)'' (2004),
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
, New York
*''Stadia I'' (2004),
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
*''Stadia II'' (2004),
Carnegie Museum of Art
The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...
,
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...
*''Stadia III'' (2004),
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the s ...
,
Richmond
Richmond most often refers to:
* Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States
* Richmond, London, a part of London
* Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England
* Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada
* Richmond, California, ...
*''Local Calm'' (2005),
San Diego Museum of Art
The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine arts museum located at 1450 El Prado in Balboa Park in San Diego, California that houses a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. The San Diego Museum of Art opened as The Fine Arts Galler ...
*''Atlantic Wall'' (2008-2009),
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
, New York
*''Auguries'' (2010),
The Broad
The Broad () is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that houses the Broad art collections. It offers free gener ...
,
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
and
National Museum of African Art
The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-S ...
,
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
,
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
*''Untitled'' (2011),
Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
*''Mogamma, A Painting in Four Parts: Part 3'' (2012),
Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
*''Mogamma, A Painting in Four Parts: Part 4'' (2012), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
*''Cairo'' (2013), The Broad, Los Angeles
*''Invisible Sun (algorithm 5, second letter form)'' (2014), Museum of Modern Art, New York
*''Myriads, Only by Dark'' (2014),
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
, Washington, D.C.
*''A Love Supreme'' (2014-2018),
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
*''Hineni (E. 3:4) (Me voici)'' (2018),
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
,
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
*''Haka (and Riot)'' (2019),
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
*''Conversion (S.M. del Popolo/after C.)'' (2019-2020),
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York
In 2016, the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
commissioned Mehretu to create a diptych, with each massive painting flanking the staircase in the atrium which is accessible and free to the public. ''HOWL, eon (I, II)'' (2016-2017) was first exhibited to the public on September 2, 2017. To facilitate the creation of the scale of the diptych, Mehretu used a decommissioned church in Harlem as her studio to create. Throughout the creation of her piece, she collaborated with jazz pianist
Jason Moran Jason Moran may refer to:
* Jason Moran (criminal) (1967–2003), Australian mobster
* Jason Moran (musician)
Jason Moran (born January 21, 1975) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator involved in multimedia art and theatrical inst ...
. ''HOWL, eon (I, II)'' is a political commentary on the history of the western United States' landscape, including the San Francisco Bay Area. The foundation of each work contains digitally abstracted photos from recent race riots, street protests, and nineteenth-century images of the American west.
Exhibitions
In 2001, Mehretu participated in the exhibition ''Painting at the Edge of the World'' at the
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
. She later was one of 38 artists whose work was exhibited in the 2004-5 ''Carnegie International'': A Final Look. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including one at the
Center for Curatorial Studies,
Bard College
Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark.
Founded in 1860, ...
, Annandale-on-Hudson (2000). Her work has appeared in ''
Freestyle'' exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2001); The Americans at th
Barbican Galleryin London (2001); White Cube gallery in London (2002), the Busan Biennale in Korea (2002); the 8th Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, Lithuania (2002); and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions (2002) at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York. Mehretu's work was also included in the "In Praise of Doubt" exhibition at the
Palazzo Grassi
Palazzo Grassi (also known as the Palazzo Grassi-Stucky) is a building in the Venetian Classical style located on the Grand Canal of Venice (Italy), between the Palazzo Moro Lin and the campo San Samuele.
History First owners
During the 16th c ...
in Venice in the summer of 2011 as well as
dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in 2012. In 2014, she participated in 'The Divine Comedy. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists' curated by
Simon Njami.
Art market
Mehretu's painting ''Untitled 1'' sold for $1.02 million at
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
in September 2010. Its estimated value had been $600–$800,000. At
Art Basel
Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...
in 2014, White Cube sold Mehretu's ''Mumbo Jumbo'' (2008) for $5 million.
In 2005, Mehretu's work was the object of the ''Lehmann v. The Project Worldwide'' case before the
New York Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in the New York State Unified Court System. (Its Appellate Division is also the highest intermediate appellate court.) It is vested with unlimited civ ...
, the first case brought by a collector regarding their right to secure primary access to contemporary art.
The case involved legal issues over her work and the right of first refusal contracts between her then-gallery and a collector. In return for a $75,000 loan by the collector Jean-Pierre Lehmann to the Project Gallery, made in February 2001, the gallery was to give Lehmann a right of first refusal on any work by any artist the gallery represented, and at a 30 per cent discount until the loan was repaid. Lehmann saw this loan as direct access to Mehretu's work, however, there were four other individuals who were also given right of first choice from the gallery's represented artists.
The gallery sold 40 works by Mehretu during the period of the contract, with some offered for discounts of up to 40 percent.
Lehmann saw that several Mehretu pieces available in the catalog of the Walker Art Center had been sold to collector Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, and suspected that the agreement was not being kept.
He subsequently wrote Haye demanding $17,500, and, after no offer of Mehretu pieces was made, he filed suit.
The case, eventually won by Lehmann, revealed to a wider public precisely what prices and discounts galleries offer various collectors on paintings by Mehretu and other contemporary artists - information normally concealed by the art world.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Website of her gallery carlier , gebauer including CV and works*
ttp://www.walkerart.org/archive/2/AF7361E991C363206165.htm Julie Mehretu at Walker Art Center, Minneapolisbr>
Julie Mehretu interviewed for Ethiopian Passages2010 article including an image of ''Untitled 1''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mehretu, Julie
American contemporary painters
Ethiopian painters
American abstract artists
Lesbian artists
Ethiopian emigrants to the United States
MacArthur Fellows
People from East Lansing, Michigan
Kalamazoo College alumni
Rhode Island School of Design alumni
1970 births
Living people
American women painters
American women printmakers
Ethiopian LGBT artists
American LGBT artists
LGBT people from Michigan
LGBT people from New York (state)
20th-century American painters
20th-century American women artists
20th-century American printmakers
21st-century American women artists
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters