Penelope Umbrico (born January 31, 1957) is an American artist best known for her work that appropriates images found using search engines and picture sharing websites.

Education and career

Umbrico was born in Philadelphia in 1957. She graduated from the

Ontario College of Art Ontario College of Art & Design University, commonly known as OCAD University or OCAD, is a public art university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus is spread throughout several buildings and facilities within do ...

in Toronto, Canada in 1980. She obtained her M.F.A. in 1989 at the

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

in New York.

Exhibitions

In 2010 her exhibition, ''As Is,'' at LMAK Projects featured a series of work called ''Broken Sets (

EBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

)'' (2009–2010), which consisted of images of broken

LCD television Liquid-crystal-display televisions (LCD TVs) are television sets that use liquid-crystal displays to produce images. They are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television display type. LCD TVs are thin and light, but have some disadvantag ...

screens that were acquired from pictures posted by eBay sellers trying to sell damaged television sets for parts. Her project ''Suns from Flickr'' started in 2006 when she found 541,795 pictures of sunsets searching the word "sunset" on the photo-sharing web site

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...

while looking for the most photographed subject (which the sunset turned out to be). She took just the suns from these pictures and made

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

snapshot Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to: * Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation Computing * Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time * Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...

prints of them. For each installation, the title reflects the number of hits she gets searching "sunset" on Flickr at the time – for example, the first installation was "541,795 Suns From Flickr" in 2006; subsequent installations were: "2303057 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 9/25/07" (2007); "3,221,717 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 3/31/08" (2008); "5,911,253 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 8/03/09" (2009) – the title itself becoming a comment on the ever-increasing use of web-based photo communities and a reflection of the collective content there. Her work has been published in the

New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

, on the cover and inside spreads accompanying "Ghosts in the Machine". In March 2012,

Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...

featured Umbrico's work on the cover and inside along with a short essay by the artist. She has served as a member of faculty at

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, 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 ...

's Summer MFA (

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is a graduate program associated with Bard College that grants Master of Fine Arts degrees. Founded in 1981, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (otherwise known as the Bard MFA program) is a nontraditi ...

) (Chair of MFA Photography from 2004 to 2010), and she is a core faculty member at the School of Visual Arts MFA Photography Video and Related Media in NYC.

Publications

* ''Variants'', 1991 * ''From Catalogs'', 1998 * ''Out of Place'', 2002 * ''Honeymoon Suites'', 2002 * ''Many Leonards Not Natman'', 2010 * ''Desk Trajectories (As Is)'', 2010 * ''Signals Still / Ink (Book) / Out of Order'', from the series ''Signal to Ink'', 2011 * ''Penelope Umbrico: Photographs'', Apeture, 2011 * ''Moving Mountains (1850–2012)'', Conveyor, 2012 * ''RANGE'', Aperture, 2014 * ''Out of Order: Used Office Desks and Used Office Plants for Sale'', RVB, 2014 * ''Out of Order: Bad Display'', RVB and Photoforum Pasquart, 2016 * Solar Eclipses From the New York Public Library Picture Collection, RVB, 2016

Awards, grants and residencies

* Sharpe-Walentas Studio Fellowship *

Pilchuck Glass School Pilchuck Glass School is an international center for glass art education. The school was founded in 1971 by Dale Chihuly, Anne Gould Hauberg (1917-2016), and John H Hauberg (1916-2002). The campus is located on a former tree farm in Stanwood, W ...

, Artist in Residence * John Gutmann Photography Fellowship * Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship *

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

* Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant *

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

Artists Fellowship *

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 ...

* Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer's Fellowship Grant *

Catalogue Project Grant

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

* Festival Images Vevey Biennale, Range: of Mount Grammont, site-specific installation, Vevey, Switzerland, 2020 *

George Eastman Museum The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

, Everyone's Moon Any License'','' Rochester NY, 2019 * Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Everyone's Moon Any License, Ballarat, Australia, 2019 *Musée des Beaux Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland, 2018 *

Peoria Riverfront Museum The Peoria Riverfront Museum is a private museum of art, science, history, and achievement located on the riverfront in downtown Peoria, Illinois in a building owned by the County of Peoria. The Museum has five major galleries and a dozen smaller ...

, Screen Light, Peoria, IL, 2017 *Special Project, Photo LA, Los Angeles, CA, 2017 *Salon d'Honeur,

Paris Photo Paris Photo is an annual international art fair dedicated to photography. It was founded in 1997, and is held in November at the Grand Palais exhibition hall and museum complex, located at the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement in Par ...

, Range: of Masters, Paris France, 2016 *

Milwaukee Art Museum The Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection contains nearly 25,000 works of art. Location and Visit Located on the lakefront of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Art Museum is one of the largest art museu ...

, Future Perfect, mid-career survey, WI, 2016 *Photoforum PasquArt, Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Bienne, Switzerland, 2016 * Bruce Silverstein Gallery, Silvery Light, NYC, 2016 *

Grand Central Terminal Grand Central Terminal (GCT; also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as Grand Central) is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Grand Central is the southern terminus ...

Light Boxes, Four Photographs of Rays at Grand Central, NY, 2015–2016 * Aldrich Museum, Shallow Sun, CT, 2015 *Alt. + 1000 Festival de Photographie, A Proposal and Two Trades, Rossinière, Switzerland, 2013 *Percent For Art/New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Cabinet 1526–2013, permanent installation for PS/IS 71, completed 2013 *Olson Gallery, Bethel University, St Paul, MN, 2013 *Alt. + 1000 Festival de Photographie, Mountains, Moving: Of Swiss Alp Postcards and Sound of Music, Rossinière, Switzerland, 2013 *Paraty Em Foco, Future, Paraty, Brazil, 2011 *

Toronto Pearson International Airport Lester B. Pearson International Airport , commonly known as Toronto Pearson International Airport, is an international airport located in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It is the main airport serving Toronto, its metropolitan area, and the surro ...

, Universal Sunset, site-specific installation, Contact Photography Festival, 2010 *

Brooklyn Academy of Music The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) is a performing arts venue in Brooklyn, New York City, known as a center for progressive and avant-garde performance. It presented its first performance in 1861 and began operations in its present location in ...

, Leonards for Leonard, site-specific installation, Brooklyn, NY, 2010 *Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, MA, 2004 *

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

, New York, 1992

Group exhibitions

, Gathering Clouds'','' Rochester, NY, 2020 *Metro Arts, New For Old'','' Brisbane, Australia, 2020 *

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...

, Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, Ann Arbor, MI, 2019 * Onassis Cultural Centre, For Ever More Images'','' Athens, Greece, 2019 *

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 ...

, Apollo's Muse'','' New York, 2019 *

Postmasters Gallery Postmasters is a contemporary art gallery located in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, owned and directed by Magda Sawon and Tamas Banovich. The Postmasters gallery opened in the East Village in December 1984, moved to SoHo in 1989, and was rel ...

, Screenscapes'','' New York, 2018 *

Chrysler Museum of Art The Chrysler Museum of Art is an art museum on the border between downtown and the Ghent district of Norfolk, Virginia. The museum was founded in 1933 as the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences. In 1971, automotive heir, Walter P. Chrysler Jr. ...

, From Ansel Adams to Infinity, Norfolk, VA, 2018 *

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, inaugural media wall commission, London, 2018 * Institute of Contemporary Art, Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, Boston, MA, 2018 *

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between t ...

, New Territory: Landscape Photography Today, Denver, CO, 2018 *Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, Visuality is the Scene of Negligence, Jimei Civic Center and Three Shadows, China, 2017 *Guangzhou Image Triennial 2017 – Simultaneous Eidos, (installation), Guangzhou, China, 2017 *

DeCordova Museum The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is a 30-acre sculpture park and contemporary art museum on the shore of Flint's Pond in Lincoln, Massachusetts, 20 miles northwest of Boston. It was established in 1950. It is the largest park of its kind ...

, Screens: Virtual Material, Lincoln, MA, 2017 *Galerie Andreas Schmidt, Perfect / Imperfect, Berlin, Germany, 2017 *

Goethe Institut The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and ...

, Cyclic Journey/s, Barcelona, Spain, 2017 * Photo Espana, Upload/Download, Madrid, Spain, 2017 *Jeonju International Photo Festival, This Location / Dis-location, Jeonju, China, 2017 *

LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961, ...

, TV on Film, Los Angeles, CA, 2017 *

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 ...

, Strength in Numbers: Photography in Groups, Pittsburgh, PA, 2016 *

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...

, Look Inside: New Photography Acquisitions, Austin, TX, 2016 *

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

, Triennial of Photography, Hamburg, Germany, 2015 *Gallery University Stellenbosch, Think of Number 6, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2015 *Ivorypress Space, Books beyond Artists: Words and Images, Madrid, Spain, 2015 *Motorenhalle, DIGITAL_ANALOG.INDIFFERENCE, Dresden, Germany, 2015 *Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Flatlander, Boulder, CO, 2015 *Sextant et plus, FOMO, Marseille, France, 2015 *BRIC Arts Media House, Brooklyn Biennial, Brooklyn, NY, 2014 *

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 ...

, A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio, New York, 2014 *

Orange County Museum of Art The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration o ...

, California Landscape into Abstraction, Newport Beach, CA, 2014 *Kasseler Kunstverein, Offline Art: Hardcore, curated by Aram Bartholl, Kassel, Germany, 2013 *Le Mois de Photo, Montreal, Canada, 2013 *

Centre d'Art Santa Mònica Centre d'Art Santa Mònica (CASM), more commonly abbreviated as Arts Santa Mònica, is a public venue in Barcelona, (Catalonia) opened in 1988, for exhibiting contemporary art. It is located in the Raval side of Rambla de Santa Mònica (Ciutat V ...

, From Here On, Barcelona, Spain, 2013 *Foto Colectania, Artist as Collector, Barcelona, Spain, 2013 *

Somerset House Somerset House is a large Neoclassical complex situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadrangle was built on the site of a Tudor palace ("O ...

, Landmark: The Fields of Photography, London, 2013 *

Aperture Foundation Aperture Foundation is a nonprofit arts institution, founded in 1952 by Ansel Adams, Minor White, Barbara Morgan, Dorothea Lange, Nancy Newhall, Beaumont Newhall, Ernest Louie, Melton Ferris, and Dody Warren. Their vision was to create a forum fo ...

Gallery, Aperture Remix, New York, 2012 *319 Scholes Gallery, Collect the WWWorld, Bushwick, NY, 2012 *Daegu Photography Biennale, Repositioned Personal, Korea, 2012 *

Photographers' Gallery The Photographers' Gallery was founded in London by Sue Davies opening on 14 January 1971, as the first public gallery in the United Kingdom devoted solely to photography. It is also home to the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, established in ...

, Born in 1987: The Animated GIF, London, 2012 * Pace MacGill Gallery, Social Media, New York, 2011 *

Rencontres d'Arles The Rencontres d’Arles (formerly called ''Rencontres internationales de la photographie d’Arles'') is an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 by the Arles photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historia ...

, From Here On, curated by Fontcuberta, Parr, Schmid, Kessels, Cheroux, Arles, France, 2011 *

MassMoCA The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing a ...

, Memery: Imitation, Memory, and Internet Culture, North Adams, MA, 2011 *

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 ...

, The Anniversary Show, San Francisco, CA, 2009 *

PS 1 Contemporary Art Center MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the ...

, Between Spaces, Long Island City, NY, 2009 *

Gallery, The Edge of Vision, New York, 2009 *New York Photography Festival, The Ubiquitous Image, May 2008 *Gallery of Modern Art, The Leisure Class, Brisbane, Australia, October 2007 – March 2008 *

Center for Curatorial Studies Founded in 1990, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present. The Center initiated its graduate program in 1994 ...

, Bard College, Neither Here Nor There: Perceptions of Place, Feb. 2005 *

Massachusetts College of Art Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation’s oldest art schools, the only publicly funded independent art school ...

, Feed, Boston, MA, October 2004 *

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 the ...

, Object and Abstraction: Contemporary Photographs, NY, Sept. 1997 *

, Eye of the Beholder, New York, September 1997 *

Creative Time Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1974 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged artworks in the public realm, particularly in vacant spaces of historical and architectura ...

, Art in the Anchorage '96, The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, Summer 1996 *

, More Than One Photography, New York, May 1992 *

Art in General Art in General was a non-profit contemporary art exhibition space known for its vibrant and ground-breaking projects as a formidable and longstanding New York City alternative space, focused on giving meaningful resources and opportunities to ar ...

, The Results Are In, New York, January 1992 *

The Drawing Center The Drawing Center is a Manhattan, New York, museum and a nonprofit exhibition space that focuses on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary. History The Drawing Center was founded by former assistant curator of drawings at ...

, Selections 41, New York, February 1988

Unclassified exhibitions

* 2009: ''For A Brief Time Only at a Location Near You'' * 2011: Exhibition at

festival, Arles, France. * 2011: Laureate from Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award.

Collections

Umbrico's work is held in the following public collections: *

Berkeley Art Museum The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from ...

, CA *

Museum of Contemporary Photography The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) was founded in 1976 by Columbia College Chicago as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography. The museum houses a permanent collection as well as the Midwest Photographers Project ...

* Carnegie Museum of Art, PA * George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY *

, Austin, TX *

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 ...

, CA *McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX *

, Milwaukee, WI *

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

, Minneapolis, MN *

, Hamburg, Germany *

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (or MCASD), in San Diego, California, US, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present. Mission The stated mission of ...

, CA *

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

, TX *

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, ...

, NY * Perez Art Museum Miami, FL *

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

, OR *

RISD Museum The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD Museum) is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877, and still shares multiple build ...

, RI *Thoma Art Foundation, Chicago IL *

, London *

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...

, NY *

, CA *

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

, New York

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Umbrico, Penelope 1980 births American women photographers Artists from Philadelphia School of Visual Arts faculty Living people OCAD University alumni School of Visual Arts alumni American women academics 21st-century American women