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Mark Sloan (born 1957) is an American artist, curator, author, and museum director.
Italic text
Mark Sloan (born 1957) is an American artist, curator, author, and museum director.
Mark Sloan was born in Durham, North Carolina, and grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sloan holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Richmond (1980) and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University (1984). [1]
As an artist, Sloan's work has been exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris; the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the Harvard Museum of Natural History; the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia; the High Museum in Atlanta; and the United States National Academy of Sciences.
Sloan's assemblage photographs illustrate Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, with writer Nancy Pick and a foreword by E.O. Wilson. This was reviewed by NPR [2] and selected as one of the top science books of 2004 by Discover [3] magazine. Wired showed Sloan's photography in conjunction with an exhibit at National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. [4] [5]
Sloan has been an arts administrator since the mid-1980s, directing two national, non-profit artists' organizations and two university art galleries. He was Executive Director of The Light Factory in Charlotte, North Carolina (1985–86); Associate Director of San Francisco Camerawork in California (1986–89); Director of the Roland Gibson Gallery at the State University of New York at Potsdam (1992–1994); Director and Chief Curator of the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston School of the Arts in Charleston, South Carolina (1994—2020); and Consulting Curator for the art collection at the Medical University of South Carolina from 2005 until 2013.
As a curator, Sloan has produced several hundred exhibitions of contemporary art, most of which highlight the work of under-known artists. Many of these exhibitions have traveled nationally and several internationally. These exhibitions, with their attendant publications, videos, and other documentation have increased the visibility of emerging and mid-career artists, many of whom have gone on to become contemporary art mainstays.
An active grant-writer who secures funding from major foundations, government agencies, and private donors, Sloan's efforts bring international artists to the United States for residencies and exhibitions. His curatorial efforts extend beyond the boundaries of his institutional affiliations. He has curated international exhibits in collaboration with Clemson University's architecture students. [6] [7] [ better source needed ] Traveling exhibitions have appeared at the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California; Presentation House Gallery, in Vancouver, British Columbia; the Musée Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland; Kyoto University of Art and Design; and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 2009, Sloan curated the Contemporary Carolina Collection, the "largest collection of original, contemporary South Carolina art on permanent display" at Ashley River Tower, a hospital at the Medical University of South Carolina. [8] [ better source needed ] The hospital exhibits 873 original works by 54 contemporary South Carolina artists; funding for the project came from private donations.[ citation needed ]
After being the director and chief curator of the Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art for two decades (hosting 243 exhibitions), Mark Sloan announced his retirement in 2020. [9] Sloan is currently an independent art and publishing consultant working under the name Curioso and has worked on various projects including curating and organizing a traveling exhibition of Ghanaian fantasy coffins for the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [10]
Southern Documentary Fund (SDF), a nonprofit arts organization that cultivates and supports Southern documentary makers and documentary projects made in or about the American South, also appointed Sloan as its Interim Executive Director. [11]
Sloan also curated "This is not: Aldwyth in Retrospect," which exhibited at the Greenville County Museum of Art and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University. [12] A catalog was published to coincide with the Exhibit, bearing the same title.
Sloan has authored or co-authored twenty-one books on subjects as various as Russian conceptual art, early 20th century circus life, and the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Several of his books document circus and sideshow history through photography and anecdote. Their titles reflect the hyperbole of the circus: Hoaxes, Humbugs, and Spectacles: Astonishing Photographs of Smelt Wrestlers, Human Projectiles, Giant Hailstones, Contortionists, Elephant Impersonators, and Much, Much, More!; Dear Mr. Ripley: A Compendium of Curioddities from the Believe It or Not Archives; and Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus 1901–1927, as Seen by F.W. Glasier, Photographer are examples. With Dear Mr. Ripley, Sloan and his co-authors Roger Manley and Michelle Van Parys were given "privileged access" to all of the correspondence sent to Robert Ripley during his worklife (1918–1948).[ citation needed ] This book appeared in US, UK, and Japanese editions.
Sloan has written for DoubleTake magazine, Mexico’s Luna Cornea, and has been a regional field editor for the College Art Association.[ citation needed ] He has written numerous catalog essays on contemporary art.
Sloan and frequent collaborator Roger Manley have produced a number of exhibitions and book projects, including Self-Made Worlds: Visionary Folk Art Environments in 1997. The resulting book and traveling exhibition were produced by Aperture.[ citation needed ]
The Aldwyth catalogue, Aldwyth: Work V./Work N. Collage and Assemblage 1991-2009, edited by Sloan and designed by Gil Shuler, won the American Alliance of Museums award in 2010. [13]
In 2012 the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, with special recognition to Mark Sloan, received the Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts, the highest award given in South Carolina for the arts. [14]
Sloan's 2018 book Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South, co-edited with Mark Long, documents the traveling exhibit with the same title, and was recognized by the J. M. Kaplan fund with the 2019 Alice Award for a "richly illustrated book that makes a valuable contribution to its field and demonstrates high standards of production." [15]
Sloan's photographs and books have inspired artists in other media. Sara Gruen credits his book Wild, Weird, and Wonderful as inspiration for her novel Water for Elephants . [16] Costumes and backgrounds for the 2010 film came from the book as well. Choreographer Twyla Tharp used Wild, Weird, and Wonderful as inspiration for the sets and costumes of her Broadway production of the musical The Times They Are a-Changin' . [17]
Sloan taught at the State University of New York at Potsdam, and was a professor at the College of Charleston, from 1994 to 2020, where he offered courses in Museum Studies and special topics courses in the Honors College.[ citation needed ]
Sloan also provided the impetus that pushed the City of Charleston to create a publicly funded exhibit space for contemporary art—the City Gallery at Waterfront Park.
Lonnie Holley, Katrina Andry, Alyson Shotz, Jasper Johns, Shepard Fairey, Fahamu Pecou, Jennifer Wen Ma, Eames Demetrious, Lesley Dill, Renee Stout, Pat Potter, Jumaadi, Yaakov Israel, Kathleen Robbins, Hung Liu, Juan Logan, Shimon Attie, Tanja Softic, Nick Cave, William Wegman, Edward Burtynsky, Emmet Gowin, Duane Michals, St. EOM (Pasaquan), Georgia Blizzard, Gay Outlaw, Pinky Bass, David Maisel, Leon Golub, David Stern, Susanna Coffey, Garth Evans, Oriane Stender, Mr. Imagination, Regina Frank, E.H. Sorrells Adewale, Quashie, The Art Guys, Jerome Meadows, Kevin Kelley, Volker Seding, Deborah Luster, Motoi Yamamoto, Simon Norfolk, Gideon Bok, Sumakshi Singh, Paola Cabal, Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin, Jerry Uelsmann, Maggie Taylor, Evon Streetman, Larry Burrows, Craig Barber, Rikuo Ueda, Richard McMahan, Leslie Wayne, Ruth Marten, Sonya Clark, Loren Schwerd, Louis St. Lewis, Kendall Messick, Tiebena Dagnogo, Phyllis Galembo, Aldwyth, Talia Greene, and Althea Murphy-Price.[ vague ]
Hung Liu (劉虹) was a Chinese-born American contemporary artist. She was predominantly a painter, but also worked with mixed-media and site-specific installation and was also one of the first artists from China to establish a career in the United States.
The Gibbes Museum of Art, formerly known as the Gibbes Art Gallery, is an art museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Established as the Carolina Art Association in 1858, the museum moved into a new Beaux Arts building at 135 Meeting Street, in the Charleston Historic District, in 1905. The Gibbes houses a premier collection of over 10,000 works of fine art, principally American works, many with a connection to Charleston or the South.
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Pedro Lobo is a Brazilian photographer. He currently lives in Portugal.
Carol Lorraine Sutton is a multidisciplinary artist born in Norfolk, Virginia, USA and now living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a painter whose works on canvas and paper have been shown in 32 solo exhibits as well as being included in 94 group shows. Her work, which ranges from complete abstraction to the use of organic and architectural images, relates to the formalist ideas of Clement Greenberg and is noted for the use of color. Some of Sutton paintings have been related to ontology.
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Merton Daniel Simpson was an American abstract expressionist painter and African and tribal art collector and dealer.
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Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.
Charles Gaines is an American visual artist, whose work interrogates the discourse of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently involves the use of systems, predominantly in the form of the grid, often in combination with photography. His work is rooted in conceptual art – in dialogue with artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner – and Gaines is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. As one of the only African-American conceptual artists working in the 1970s, a time when political expressionism was a prevailing concern among African-American artists, Gaines was an outlier in his pursuit of abstraction and non-didactic approach to race and politics. There is a strong musical thread running through much of Gaines' work, evident in his repeated use of musical scores as well in his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy, as similar to John Cage and Sol LeWitt. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
William M. Halsey (1915–1999) was an influential abstract artist in the American Southeast, particularly in his home state of South Carolina. He was represented by the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York City (1948–53). His mural studies for the Baltimore Hebrew Congregational Temple were included in Synagogue Art Today at the Jewish Museum, New York City (1952). His work was included in the annual International Exhibition of Watercolors, the Art Institute of Chicago. He had work in the Whitney Museum's Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings (1953). A mid-career retrospective was held at the Greenville County Museum of Art in 1972 and then traveled to the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina, and the Florence Museum, Florence, South Carolina.
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Kelani Nichole is a technologist and curator of time-based media and digital art active in the United States and abroad. She is the founding director of Transfer Gallery. Nichole has organized online exhibitions and public programs and in venues in cities like Brooklyn, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, and Mexico City, among others.
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