Sam Durant is a multimedia artist whose works engage a variety of social, political, and cultural issues. Often referencing American history, his work explores the varying relationships between culture and politics, engaging subjects as diverse as the civil rights movement, southern rock music, and modernism.

His work has been widely exhibited internationally and in the United States. He has had solo museum exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Dusseldorf, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand. His work has been included in the Panamá, Sydney, Venice and Whitney Biennales.

His work has been extensively written about including seven monographic catalogs and books. In 2006 he compiled and edited a comprehensive monograph of Black Panther artist Emory Douglas' work. His recent curatorial credits include Eat the Market at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Black Panther: the Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the New Museum in New York.

He has co-organized numerous group shows and artists benefits and is a co-founder of Transforma, a cultural rebuilding collective project that began in New Orleans. He was a finalist for the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize and has received a United States Artists Broad Fellowship and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant.

His work can be found in many public collections including The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, Tate Modern in London, Project Row Houses in Houston and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Durant teaches art at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.

BORN
Seattle, Washington 1961
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

EDUCATION
California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, M.F.A.
Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, M.A., B.F.A.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia
Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Paris, France,
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY,
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Institut d'Art Contemporain Villeurbanne, Lyon, France
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
The Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, Canada
Project Row Houses, Houston, TX
Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium
Tate Modern, London, England
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS

2005
Public Prosecutors' Office, City of Arnhem, the Netherlands
2003
Project Row Houses, Houston, TX
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

GRANTS AND AWARDS
2008
Hugo Boss Finalist, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Hugo Boss Prize, New York, NY
Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
2006
United States Artists Fellow, USA Foundation, New York, NY
2005
The Ordway Prize Finalist, Penny McCall Foundation, New York, NY
2002-2003
Walker Art Center Artist in Residence, Minneapolis, MN
1999
Individual Artist Grant, Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

OTHER PROJECTS
2008
All Power to the People: The History and Legacy of the Black Panther Party Film Festival, REDCAT/CalArts Theater, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, CA
2007
Black Panther:The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglasedited by and with an introduction by Sam Durant, with contributions by Danny Glover, Bobby Seale, Sonia Sanchez, Kathleen Cleaver, Colette Gaiter, Greg Jung Morozumi, Amiri Baraka, and St. Clair Bourne, published by Rizzoli, New York, NY
2006
Harlem Postcards Summer 2006, Studio Museum Harlem, New York, NY
2005
The Other Side/El Otro Lado (Regionalism, Nationalism, Imperialism), artist multiple, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2014
Pigs and Gold, Eastern Star Gallery at The Archer School for Girls, Los Angeles

2013
What #isamusuem, The Getty Center, Los Angeles
La Stessa Storia, Museo d'arte contemporanea, Rome (MACRO)
Proposal for Public Fountain, Sadie Coles HQ, London

2011
Propaganda of the Deed, Franco Soffiantino Gallery, Turin, Italy; Centro Arti Plastiche, Carrara (2013)
Laissez Faire et Laissez Passer, Le Monde Va De Lui Meme, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA
Mirror Travels in Neoliberalism, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France

2010
History Never Ends, I Hate to Bother You, Sadie Coles HQ, London, United Kingdom
Dead Labor Day, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

2009
This is Freedom?, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA

2008
Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France

2007
Sam Durant, Sadie Coles HQ, London, United Kingdom
Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Myths, Massacres and Monuments, Blum & Poe,
Los Angeles, CA
Echoplex, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY
Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Natural History, Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.

2006
Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Goodbye Merrymount, Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan, Italy
Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Myths, Massacres and Monuments, Stephen D. Paine Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA (cat.)

2005
Presse Ne Pas Avaler, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France
Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monuments Transposition, Washington D.C,
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY (cat.)
Color Pictures, Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver, B.C.

2004
Edward Said, The Suburban, Oak Park, IL
Involved, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA
12 Signs: transposed and illuminated (with various indexes), Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium (cat.)
We Are All Outlaws in the Eyes of Amerika, Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan, Italy

2003
We Are the People, Project Row House, Houston, TX
Walker Art Center Garden Project, Artist-in-Residence,
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Union Projects, London, United Kingdom
Entropy in Reverse, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand (cat.)
The Wrong Gallery, New York, NY
Sam Durant, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany (cat.)

2002
Institute of Visual Arts, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI
Sam Durant, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (cat.)
Color Pictures, Blum & Poe, Santa Monica, CA
Sam Durant: 7 Signs; removed, cropped, enlarged and illuminated (plus index),
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

2001
Southern Tree, Tree of Knowledge, Dead Tree (part one), Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan, Italy
Consciousness Raising Historical Analysis, Pain plus Time Separated and Ordered with Emphasis on Reflection, Kunsthof Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

2000
Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Proposal for Monument in Friendship Park, Jacksonville, FLA., Blum & Poe,
Santa Monica, CA

Source:
Website of the Artist