Polly E. Apfelbaum (born Abington, Pennsylvania 1955) is an American 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 ...

, who is primarily known for her colorful drawings, sculptures, and fabric floor pieces, which she refers to as "fallen paintings"."Polly Apfelbaum"
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Retrieved 31 October 2018. She currently lives and works in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, New York.

Biography

Polly Apfelbaum was born in 1955 in

Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Abington Township is a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It is adjacent to Philadelphia's northern fringe. The population was 55,310 as of the 2010 census, making it the second most populous township in Montgomery County after Lower ...

. Apfelbaum has lived and worked in New York City since 1978. That same year, she received her BFA from the

Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is based at Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate students in a wid ...

in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Apfelbaum also received training from SUNY Purchase College in New York. She has been showing her work consistently in the United States and internationally since her first one-person show in 1986. Apfelbaum came to prominence in the 1990s and is best known for what the artist refers to as her "fallen paintings." These large-scale installations consist of hundreds of hand-cut and hand-dyed pieces of velvet fabric that are arranged on the floor. These installations exist as a hybrid between painting and sculpture and occupy an ambiguous space between the two genres. Lane Relyea states "Apfelbaum's work is both painting and sculpture, and perhaps photography and fashion and formless material process as well." In 2003, a major mid-career survey show of Apfelbaum's work opened at the

Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia The Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA is a contemporary art museum in Philadelphia. The museum is associated with the University of Pennsylvania, and is located on its campus. The Institute is one of the country's leading museums dedicated to e ...

. The show traveled through 2004 to the

Contemporary Arts Center The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is a contemporary art museum in Cincinnati, Ohio and one of the first contemporary art institutions in the United States. The CAC is a non-collecting museum that focuses on new developments in painting, sculptur ...

in Cincinnati, OH, and the

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 in Kansas City, Missouri. With a $5 million annual budget and approximately 75,000 visitors each year, it is Missouri's first and largest contemporary museum. Founders The core of the museum's perm ...

in Kansas City, MO. In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue surveying 15 years of the artist's work was published by the

Exhibitions

Polly Apfelbaum has exhibited widely since the 1980s, including one-person exhibitions at: Alexander Gray Associates (2017); Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA (2016); la chapelle Saint-Jean (Le Sourn), part of L’art dans les chapelles – 26e édition (2017); 56 Henry (2016); Bepart, Waregem, Belgium (2015); Clifton Benevento (2014); Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA (2014); lumber room, Portland, OR (2014); Burlington City Arts Center (2014); Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai, India (2013). The Potential of Women (detail)

Two person shows including: "The Sound of Ceramics" with Wang Lu (2016); "Erasing Tracing Racing Paint" with Dona Nelson (2016); "Karma Funk Factory" with Steven Westfall (2014); "For the Love of Gene Davis" with Dan Cole (2014); "Studiowork" with Nicole Cherubini (2010); Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including: An Irruption of the Rainbow, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Wall to Wall, MOCA Cleveland, Cleveland, OH (2016); Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA (2015); Three Graces, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2015); Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today, Museum of Art and Design, New York (2015); AMERICANA: Formalizing Craft, Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL (2013); Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (2012); Operativo, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, (2001) ''The Night,''

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

, San Francisco; ''Reckless'', Museum of Contemporary Art

Kiasma ) , established = (Museum of Contemporary Art) (opening of Kiasma building) , dissolved = , location = Helsinki, Finland , type = Art museum , accreditation = , key_holdings = , co ...

; Helsinki, Finland; ''Skin and Bones'',

Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. When Bowdoin was chartered in 1794, Maine was still a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college offers 34 majors and 36 minors, as well as several joint eng ...

, Brunswick, ME; ''What Does Love Have to Do With It'',

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 ...

, Boston; ''Today I Love Everybody'', Triple Candie, New York; and ''Crazy Love, Love Crazy'',

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is an art museum for contemporary art, located in St. Louis, Missouri. Known informally as the CAM St. Louis, the museum is located at 3750 Washington Boulevard in the Grand Center Arts District. The buildin ...

, MO. Apfelbaum's work has also been featured in a number of notable museum exhibitions including ''Sense and Sensibility: Women and Minimalism in the 90s'', ''Comic Abstraction'' and ''Lines, Grids, Stains and Words,'' all 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 ...

, New York; ''Painting-The Extended Field'', Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden; ''Postmark: An Abstract Effect'',

Site Santa Fe SITE Santa Fe (often referred to simply as SITE) is a nonprofit contemporary arts organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since its founding in 1995, SITE Santa Fe has presented 11 biennials, more than 90 contemporary art exhibitions, and w ...

, NM; ''Operativo'',

Museo Rufino Tamayo Museo Rufino Tamayo is a public contemporary art museum located in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park, that produces contemporary art exhibitions, using its collection of modern and contemporary art, as well as artworks from the collection of its fo ...

, Mexico City, Mexico; ''Sculpture as Field'', Kunstverein Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany; ''The Eye of the Beholder'',

Dundee Contemporary Arts Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) is an art centre in Dundee, Scotland, with two contemporary art galleries, a two-screen cinema, a print studio, a learning and public engagement programme, a shop and a café bar. The director of DCA is Beth Bate ...

, Dundee, Scotland; ''As Painting: Division and Displacement,''

Wexner Center for the Arts The Wexner Center for the Arts is the Ohio State University's "multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art". The Wexner Center opened in November 1989, named in honor of the father of Limite ...

, Columbus, OH; ''Flowers Observed, Flowers Transformed'' at The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; and ''Extreme Abstraction,'' at the

Albright-Knox Art Gallery The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...

, Buffalo, NY. She was featured in several biennale’s including ''Beyond Borders'' Beaufort Biennial, Mu.ZEE, Ostend, Belgium, ''Lodz Biennale'', Lodz, Poland; ''Painting Outside Painting'', 44th Corcoran Painting Biennial at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington D.C.; ''Other'', 4th Biennale D'art Contemporain de Lyon, France; Everyday, 11th Biennale of Sydney, Australia; and ''Bienal de Valencia,'' Valencia, Spain.

Honors

In 2002 Apfelbaum was the recipient of an Academy Award from the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

. In 2012-2013, she was the recipient of the Joseph H. Hazen

Rome Prize The Rome Prize is awarded by the American Academy in Rome, in Rome, Italy. Approximately thirty scholars and artists are selected each year to receive a study fellowship at the academy. Prizes have been awarded annually since 1921, with a hiatus ...

, a prize which is awarded to a select group of individuals who represent the highest standard of excellence in the arts and humanities. She has also been a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Grant, a Richard Diebenkorn Fellowship, a

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 ...

in 1993, an Artist’s Fellowship from the

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 ...

, and the

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...

Grant.

Public collections

Polly Apfelbaum's work is in a number of museum collections including: *

Armand Hammer Museum of Art The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

, Los Angeles, CA *

Austin Museum of Art The Contemporary Austin, originally known as the Austin Museum of Art, is Austin, Texas's primary contemporary art museum, consisting of two locations and an art school. The Contemporary Austin reflects the spectrum of contemporary art through exh ...

, Austin, TX * Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME *

Brooklyn Museum of Art 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, Cro ...

, Brooklyn, NY *

Bronx Museum of the Arts The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by ...

, Bronx, NY * Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Stanford, CA *

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, PA *

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

, Dallas *

Des Moines Art Center The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa. History The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines A ...

, Des Moines, IA *

Everson Museum of Art Everson may refer to: People with the surname * Ben Everson (born 1987), English footballer * Bill Everson (1906–1966), Welsh international rugby union player * Cliff Everson, a New Zealand car designer and manufacturer * Corinna Everson (born ...

, Syracuse, NY *FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais,

Dunkerque Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery is a part of Skidmore College and located in Saratoga Springs, New York. Building The Tang, opened in 2000, was designed by architect Antoine Predock. Predock's design includes two major gal ...

at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY *

Henry Art Gallery The Henry Art Gallery ("The Henry") is a contemporary art museum located on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it wa ...

, Seattle * Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel *

, Kansas City, MO *Magasin 3, Stockholm, Sweden *

Miami Art Museum Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at th ...

, Miami *

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (, Paris' Museum of Modern Art) or MAM Paris, is a major municipal museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art of the 20th and 21st centuries, including monumental murals by Raoul Dufy, Gaston Suisse, and Henri ...

, New York *Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago *National Academy Museum, New York *

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...

, Washington DC *New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM *Perez Museum, Miami, FL *

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

, Philadelphia *

Princeton University Art Museum The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...

, Princeton, NJ * RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI *

Speed Art Museum The Speed Art Museum, originally known as the J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, now colloquially referred to as the Speed by locals, is the oldest and largest art museum in Kentucky. It was established in 1927 in Louisville, Kentucky on Third Street ...

, Louisville, KY *

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 ...

, Ann Arbor, MI *

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), ...

, New York *

Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and ranks among th ...

, Worcester, MA *

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

, New Haven, CT

References

External links

Artist's WebsiteGalerie naechst St. StephanFrith Street GalleryDurham Press
{{DEFAULTSORT:Apfelbaum, Polly 1955 births 20th-century American women artists 20th-century American sculptors 21st-century American sculptors 21st-century American Jews Living people Temple University Tyler School of Art alumni Jewish American artists Artists from Pennsylvania Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania 21st-century American women artists American women sculptors