Sarah Morris (born 20 June 1967 in Sevenoaks,

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

) is an American and British artist. She lives in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in the United States.

Personal life and education

Morris was born in Sevenoaks,

, in south-east England, on 20 June 1967. She attended

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

from 1985 to 1989,

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, and the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1989–90. She was a Berlin Prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 1999–2000; in 2001 she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation painting award.Werner Miester (27 March 2010)
Best Works by Sarah Morris on View at Gallery Meyer Kainer
Art Knowledge News. Archived 30 March 2010. She was married to Liam Gillick.

Work

Morris works in both painting and film, and considers the two to be interconnected. From about 1997 her paintings were geometric

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

grid designs with flat planes of colour; a related series was of glass-faced skyscrapers with geometric landscape designs reflected in their façades. Among her earlier painting styles were screen-prints reminiscent of Andy Warhol, word-paintings, and paintings of shoes. Robert Towne Installation

Morris's films have been characterized as

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...

s that focus on the psychology of individuals or cities. Her films about cities, like ''Midtown'', ''Chicago'', ''Los Angeles'', and ''Rio'' depict urban scenes, capturing the architecture, politics, industry and

leisure Leisure (, ) has often been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. Free time is time spent away from business, Employment, work, job hunting, Housekeeping, domestic chores, and education, as well as necessary activities such as ...

which define a specific place. Other films describe a place through the viewpoint of an individual, like psychologist Dr. George Sieber describing the terrorist event at the Olympic Stadium in Munich in the film ''1972'' or the industry politics of Hollywood from the viewpoint of screenwriter and producer in the eponymous film Robert Towne.

Exhibitions

She has shown internationally, with

solo exhibition A solo show or solo exhibition is an art exhibition, exhibition of the work of only one artist. Rather than a group of artists who collaborate to form an exhibition. The artwork may be paintings, drawings, etchings, collage, sculpture, or photogr ...

s at Hamburger Bahnhof in

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(2001), Palais de Tokyo in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

(2005), Fondation Beyeler in

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

(2008), Museum für Moderne Kunst in

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

(2009), Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2009), Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot (2012), M Museum, Leuven, Belgium (2015), Kunsthalle Wein, Vienna, Austria (2016), Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland (2017), UCCA, Beijing, China (2018), Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2024) Her mid-career retrospective titled "All Systems Fail" traveled to multiple cities and museums in 2023 and 2024 including: Deichtorhallen Hamburg, German

Kunstmuseen Krefeld, German

Zentrum Paul Klee , Bern, Switzerlan

and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, German

She has created Site-specific art, site-specific works for various institutions including the Lever House, Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Museum, Düsseldorf, Germany, the lobby of UBS in New York City, the Gloucester Road tube station in London,Coline Milliard (12 June 2012)
Sarah Morris On Taking Big Ben Underground at London's Gloucester Road Tube Station
''ArtInfo''. Archived 18 December 2014. the

Metropolitan Transportation Authority The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a New York state public benefit corporations, public benefit corporation in New York (state), New York State responsible for public transportation in the New York metropolitan area, New York Ci ...

, Dutch Kills / 39th Ave Subway Station, Ad-Diriyah Biennale in

Riyadh Riyadh is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia. It is also the capital of the Riyadh Province and the centre of the Riyadh Governorate. Located on the eastern bank of Wadi Hanifa, the current form of the metropolis largely emerged in th ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

, St. Louis Lambert International Airport, General Dynamics Headquarters in Reston,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, Tulsa Convention Center,

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, Gateway School for Sciences,

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, New York, and

Cleveland Clinic Cleveland Clinic is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit Academic health science center, academic Medical centers in the United States, medical center based in Cleveland, Ohio. Owned and operated by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, an O ...

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

Key Biscayne Key Biscayne () is an island located in Miami-Dade County, Florida, located between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay. It is the southernmost of the barrier islands along the Atlantic coast of Florida, and lies south of Miami Beach and sout ...

Community Center, Key Biscayne, Florida. Morris's films have been featured at the following: * Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (Entire filmography) * Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (''Strange Magic'') * Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (''Chicago'') *

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in New York (''Points on a Line'') * Barbican Centre in London (''Beijing, Midtown'') * Guggenheim in New York (''Midtown, AM/PM, Capital, Miami, Los Angeles'') *

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

(''Midtown, AM/PM, Capital, Miami, Los Angeles'') * M+ in Hong Kong (''ETC)'' * Locarno Film Festival,

Locarno Locarno (; ; Ticinese dialect, Ticinese: ; formerly in ) is a southern Switzerland, Swiss List of towns in Switzerland, town and Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the district Locarno (district), Locarno (of which it is the capita ...

, Italy (''Rio'') Tribute

Public collections

* Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo * Berardo Collection, Sintra, Portugal * Beyeler Foundation, Riehen, Switzerland *

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lang ...

, London * Centre d’Art Contemporain, Le Consortium, Dijon *

, Paris * Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York * Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas * DekaBank, Frankfurt am Main * Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy * Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris * F.R.A.C. Bourgogne, Dijon * F.R.A.C. Poitou-Charentes *

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in the UK and ...

, London * Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York * Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum fur Gegenwart, Berlin * Jumex Museum, Ciudad de Mexico * Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen * Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg * Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich * Luma Foundation, Arles, France * Miami Art Museum * Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris * Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles * Museum of Modern Art, New York * Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt * M+, Hong Kong * Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka * National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. * National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne *

Neue Nationalgalerie The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its sculpt ...

im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin * Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection * Sammlung DaimlerChrysler, Berlin * Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam *

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

, London * Yale Center for British Art, New Haven *

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

, London * UBS Art Collection, New York

Filmography

* ''Midtown'' (1998) * ''AM/PM'' (1999) * ''Capital'' (2000) * ''Miami'' (2002) * ''Los Angeles'' (2004) * ''Robert Towne'' (2006) * ''1972'' (2008) * ''Beijing'' (2008) * ''Points on a Line'' (2010) * ''Chicago'' (2011) * ''Rio'' (2012) * ''Strange Magic'' (2014) * ''Abu Dhabi'' (2016) * ''Finite and Infinite Games'' (2017) * ''Sakura'' (2019) * ''ETC'' (2024)

Other activities

* Americans for the Arts, Member of the Artists CommitteeArtists Committee
Americans for the Arts.

Origami lawsuit

In 2011 Morris was sued by a group of six origami artists, including American Robert J. Lang. They alleged that in 24 works (eventually discovered to be 33 or more) in her "Origami" series of paintings Morris had without permission or credit copied their original crease patterns, coloured them, and sold them as "found" or "traditional" designs. The case was settled out of court early in 2013; under the terms of the settlement, the creators of the crease patterns are to be given credit when the works are displayed.