Dara Birnbaum Biography



Dara Birnbaum received a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and a B.F.A. in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. A retrospective exhibition of her work was organised by S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, Belgium (2009) and also traveled to Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2010.) In conjunction with the retrospective, a major monograph on Ms. Birnbaum's work, The Dark Matter of Media Light, was published. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); the Reina Sofia, Madrid (2010); MACBA, Barcelona, Spain (2010); Kunsthalle and MuMOK, Vienna (2010); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2009); Modern Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, (2009); The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan (2009); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1999); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1995); Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy (1991); and the Tate Gallery, London (1985.) She has participated in documenta 7, 8, and 9. Most recently, she has been awarded a Creative Artist Residency at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation (2011) as well as a USA Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz Fellow (2010). In addition, she is the recipient of numerous distinguished awards, including a Certificate in Recognition of Service and Contribution to the Arts, Harvard University, 1988; TV Picture Prize, International Festival of Video and Electronic Arts in Locarno, Switzerland (1991); and the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award for Independent Film and Video Artists (1987) and several National Endowment for the Arts, amongst others.

Text courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery.