Nancy Davidson

Nancy Davidson is an interdisciplinary artist, working primarily in sculpture and installation. Davidson grew up in Chicago and received a BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1975. She began exhibiting in solo and group shows in 1977 and ’78 at such institutions as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Walker Art Center. In 1979, Davidson relocated to New York.

Davidson, a professor emerita in the School of Art+Design at Purchase College, taught in the sculpture program for 24 years, from 1984 to 2008. She also taught at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (1977–79) and Williams College (1980–84).

Davidson’s sculptural works have been exhibited in a host of notable museums, including the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Penn.; the Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Stamford, Conn.; and the N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago, Illinois.

Her numerous honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014), Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants (2001, 2015), Creative Capital grant (2005), Anonymous Was a Woman Award (1997), Yaddo residencies (1980, 2003), Massachusetts Council of Arts Individual Artist Fellowship (1981), and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1979). Davidson’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Artforum, the Village Voice, the Brooklyn Rail, Der Spiegel, and Art/Text.

To learn more about the artist and her work, visit the Betty Cuningham Gallery.