Anthony Hanna Berlant (born 1941) is an American artist who was born in New York City. He attended the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

, where he received a BA (1961) and MA (1962) in painting and an MFA (1963) in sculpture. He has a large collection of Southwestern Native American art, especially

Mimbres pottery Mogollon culture () is an archaeological culture of Native American peoples from Southern New Mexico and Arizona, Northern Sonora and Chihuahua, and Western Texas. The northern part of this region is Oasisamerica, while the southern span of the M ...

and Navajo rugs.Honolulu Museum of Art, ''Spalding House: Self-guided Tour, Sculpture Garden'', 2014, p. 2. He lives and works in

Santa Monica, California Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

Work

Berlant became known for his collages of found metal objects. More recently, he has used

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

of his own manufacture, gaining control over the color.

Mimbres pottery collection

Berlant was a founding member of the Mimbres Foundation, a Los Angeles-based archaeological conservancy attempting to protect vulnerable Mimbres sites. The Mimbres Foundation also assembled the first photographic archive of all known Mimbres figurative pottery. This archive is currently maintained by the

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...

.Stephen A. LeBlanc
''Painted by a Distant Hand: Mimbres Pottery from the American Southwest''
Peabody Museum Collection Series, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. 2004 Parts of the archive are available online. Berlant worked with archaeologist

Steven A. LeBlanc Steven A. LeBlanc (born 1943) is an American archaeologist and former director of collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum. He is the author a number of books about Southwest archeolog ...

and others in attempts to attribute Mimbres painted pottery to specific (but still anonymous) Native artists. Berlant and LeBlanc found that (in their opinions) a relatively small number of Mimbres artists made the majority of the ancient pottery, perhaps as few as 2 or 3 artists per village at any given time. Berlant identified one prolific artist he called the "Rabbit Master," who painted rabbits in Figure-ground reversal. Examples are given in a later paper by Russell and Hegmon, which gives examples and photos of other ancient Mimbreño artists' work.

Collections

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 ...

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

(Washington, D.C.) *

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

* Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts (Stanford, California) *

Long Beach Museum of Art The Long Beach Museum of Art is a museum located on Ocean Boulevard in the Bluff Park neighborhood of Long Beach, California, United States. The museum's permanent collection includes over 4,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, works on paper, a ...

(

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

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 ...

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 ...

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...

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 ...

Oakland Museum of California The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cali ...

(Oakland, California) *

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 ...

(Newport Beach, California) *

Palm Springs Art Museum The Palm Springs Art Museum (formerly the Palm Springs Desert Museum) was founded in 1938, and is a regional art, natural science and performing arts institution for Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley, in Riverside County, California, United St ...

(Palm Springs, California) *

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 ...

Sheldon Museum of Art The Sheldon Museum of Art is an art museum in the city of Lincoln, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Its collection focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art. History Sheldon Art Association In 1888, The Sheldon Art Assoc ...

(Lincoln, Nebraska) *

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 City) *

Wichita Art Museum The Wichita Art Museum is an art museum located in Wichita, Kansas, United States. The museum was established in 1915, when Louise Caldwell Murdock’s Will which created a trust to start the Roland P. Murdock Collection of art in memory of her ...

(Wichita, Kansas)

Personal life

Berlant is

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

. He met performer, Helen Méndez, in a party in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

, in the 1970s, ten years later they met again in

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 he recognized her immediately, the two married in 1985. Their daughter is

Kate Berlant Kate Elizabeth Méndez Berlant (born 1987) is an American comedian, actress, and writer. Her stand-up comedy and improvisational work are often surrealist and absurdist. Early life Kate Elizabeth Méndez Berlant was born in Los Angeles in 1987 ...

References

* Brody, J. J. et al., ''Mimbres Pottery Ancient Art of the American Southwest with introduction by Tony Berlant'', Hudson Hills Press, New York, 1983 * Clothier, Peter, ''Tony Berlant: Recent Work 1982-1987'', Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, 1987 * Fourcade, Xavier, ''Tony Berlant New Work 1985-1986'', publisher: Xavier Fourcade, 1986 * Fujinami, Josine & Niriko Fujinami, ''Individual Realities In The California Art Scene Exhibition, Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, May 11 - June 10, 1991 Text in English and Japanese Artists in the exhibit: Peter Alexander, Carlos Almarez, Tony Berlant, Laurie Brown, Suzanne Caporae Ianco-Starreles'', Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1991 * Holstein, Jonathan & Robert MacDonald, ''Artist's Quilts: Quilts by ten contemporary artists in collaboration with Ludy Strauss. Peter Alexander / Charles Arnoldi / Tony Berlant / Ron Cooper / Guy Dill / Laddie John Dill / Claire Falkenstein / Charles Garabedian / Craig Kauffman / Ken Price'', La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, 1981 * Honolulu Museum of Art, ''Spalding House: Self-guided Tour, Sculpture Garden'', 2014, p. 2. * L A Louver Gallery, ''Tony Berlant: Recent Work'', L.A. Louver, Los Angeles, 1988 * L A Louver Gallery, ''Tony Berlant New Work 1990-93'', L A Louver, 1993 * Paul, Stella & Cheryl A. Brutvan, ''Tony Berlant: Recent Work'', Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas, 1982 * Plake, Tony, Katherine Plake & Hough Berlant, ''Navajo Blankets from the Collection of Tony Berlant'', Palm Springs Desert Museum, 1991 * Plous, Phyllis, '' Sculptural Perspectives : An Exhin=bition of Small Sculptures of the 70s. Joel Shapiro - Judy Pfaff - Don Johnson - Tony Berlant - Thomas Bang'', University of California, Santa Barbara, 1979 * Sachs, Sid, ''An Inside Place; Interior Spaces of the Mind and Ey By Tony Berlant, Robert Bingham, March Hermansader, Jane Irish, Jess, Irving Perlin, H. C. Westermann'', Noyes Museum, Oceanville NJ, 1985 * Whitney Museum of American Art, ''Tony Berlant: The Marriage of New York and Athens'', Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1974

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berlant, Tony American sculptors Modern sculptors 1941 births Living people UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture alumni Jewish American artists 21st-century American Jews