Moyra Davey (born 1958) is an
artist based in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. Davey works across photography, video, and writing.
Early life
Moyra Davey was born in 1958 in
Toronto, Ontario
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, Canada. She grew up in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...
, where she studied photography and received a BFA from
Concordia University in 1982. She then achieved an MFA from the
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...
in 1988. In 1989, she attended
The Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
Independent Study Program.
Career
Since the late 1970s, Davey has built a body of work composed of photographs, writings, and video. She was previously a faculty member at the
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, ...
International Center of Photography Program.
Davey is represented by greengrassi, London and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin/New York.
Solo exhibitions
*1985 –
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre is located in Kingston, Ontario, in the heart of the historic campus of Queen's University. Situated on traditional Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territory, the gallery has received a number of awards for its exhib ...
, Kingston, Ontario
*1994 – Moyra Davey, Peter Doig,
Gavin Brown's Enterprise
Gavin Brown's enterprise was an art gallery with venues in New York City and Rome owned by Gavin Brown between 1994 and 2020. In 2020, it merged with Gladstone Gallery.
History Broome Street
The gallery was established by Gavin Brown in 1994 on ...
, New York; American Fine Arts, Co., New York
*2006 – Monologues (with Julia Scher), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio
*2008 – Long Life Cool White, The Fogg Art Museum,
Harvard Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
*2009 – My Necropolis, Arch II Gallery, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg
*2010 – Speaker Receiver,
Kunsthalle Basel
Kunsthalle Basel is a contemporary art gallery in Basel, Switzerland. As Switzerland's oldest and still most active institution for contemporary art, Kunsthalle Basel forms a vital part of Basel's cultural centre and is located next to the city's ...
, Basel, Switzerland
*2013 – Ornament and Reproach,
Presentation House Gallery
The Polygon Gallery (formerly known as the Presentation House Gallery) is an art gallery in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atla ...
, Vancouver
*2013 – Hangmen of England,
Tate Liverpool
Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development C ...
, Liverpool, UK
*2014 – Burn the Diaries,
Mumok, Vienna;
Camden Arts Centre
Camden Art Centre (formerly known as Hampstead Arts Centre until 1967 and Camden Arts Centre until 2020) is a contemporary art gallery in the London Borough of Camden, England that hosts temporary exhibitions and educational outreach projects. T ...
, London
*2017 – Empties,
Galerie Buchholz
Galerie Buchholz is an art gallery specializing in international contemporary art with exhibition spaces in Cologne, Berlin and New York City. The gallery was founded in Cologne in 1986 by Daniel Buchholz, and today is run jointly with Christopher ...
, Cologne
*2017 – Portrait / Landscape, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin
*2017 – Hell Notes,
Portikus
Portikus is an exhibition hall for contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main, that was founded in 1987 by Kasper König. The museum is part of the Museumsufer. Portikus presents the work of internationally renowned artists, and exhibits younger, emer ...
, Frankfurt
*2018 – Hell Notes, , Bielefeld
*2018 – "1943", Galerie Buchholz, New York
*2018 – Bring My Garters/Do Nothing, experimenter, Kolkata
*2019 –
Scotiabank Photography Award: Moyra Davey,
Ryerson Image Centre
The Image Centre (formerly known as the Ryerson Image Centre and the Ryerson Gallery and Research Centre) is an photography and art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The centre is a university museum operated by Toronto Metropolitan University ...
, Toronto
*2019 – Les Goddesses,
Art Institute of Chicago
*2019 – i confess, greengrassi, London
*2020 – Moyra Davey Peter Hujar, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin (with Peter Hujar)
*2020 – The Faithful,
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...
, Ottawa
*2020 – Lanak/Obras/Works,
Artium Museum
The Artium Museum is a contemporary art museum located in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the province of Álava in northern Spain. Designed by the architect José Luis Caton, it is owned by the Provincial Council of Álava and opened 26 April ...
, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
*2022 – Film series,
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
Awards
*2004 –
Anonymous Was A Woman Award
The Anonymous Was A Woman Award is a grant program for women artists who are over 40 years of age, in part to counter sexism in the art world. It began in 1996 in direct response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to stop funding in ...
*2010 –
The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate c ...
Award
*2018 –
Scotiabank Photography Award
*2020 –
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
*2022 –
Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts
The Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts are annual awards for achievements in visual and media arts in Canada. Up to eight awards are presented annually with the prize amount is $25,000
Created in 2000 by then Governor General Adrie ...
Collections
Davey's work is held in the following permanent collections:
*
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it ...
, St. Louis, Missouri;
*Museum of Modern Art, New York
*
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
*Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
*Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
*
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
*
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 wa ...
,
*
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
*
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
*
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...
, Ottawa
*
Art Gallery of Ontario
The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; french: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West between McCaul and Bev ...
, Toronto
Publications
*''
Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood''. Edited by Moyra Davey (New York: Seven Stories, 2001).
*''The Problem of Reading'' (Los Angeles: Documents Books, 2003).
*''Long Life Cool White: Photographs and Essays by Moyra Davey'' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). Introduction by Helen Molesworth.
*''Copperheads'' (Toronto: Byewater Bros. Editions, 2010).
*''Speaker Receiver'' (Berlin: Sternberg, 2010). Essays by George Baker, Bill Horrigan, Chris Kraus, and Eric Rosenberg, and an interview by Adam Szymczyk. .
*''The Wet and the Dry'' (Paris: Paraguayress, 2011). Edited by castillo/corrales and Will Holder.
*''Empties'' (Vancouver: Presentation House, 2013).
*''Burn the Diaries'' (Brooklyn: Dancing Foxes, 2014).
*''I'm Your Fan'' (London: Camden Arts Centre, 2014).
* ''Les Goddesses / Hemlock Forest'' (Brooklyn: Dancing Foxes, 2017). Introduction by Aveek Sen.
*''Gold Dumps and Ant Hills'' (Berlin: Toupée, 2017).
* ''Index Cards: Selected Essays'' (New Directions, 2020). Edited by Nicolas Linnert.
*''I Confess'' (Ottawa/Brooklyn: National Gallery of Canada and Dancing Foxes, 2020). Essays by Dalie Giroux and Andrea Kunard.
References
External Links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davey, Moyra
1958 births
Living people
20th-century Canadian women artists
21st-century Canadian women artists
Artists from Toronto
Bard College faculty
Concordia University alumni
University of California, San Diego alumni
Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts winners