Dana Schutz

Dana Schutz (b. 1976) is a New York–based painter and sculptor who constructs complex, allegorical visual narratives that engage the capacity of art to represent subjective experience. Often depicting figures in seemingly impossible, enigmatic, or invented situations, her works reveal the deeper complications, tensions, and ambiguities of contemporary life.

Schutz was born in Livonia, Michigan, and received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from Columbia University, New York.

A major solo traveling exhibition of the artist’s work, Dana Schutz: The Visible World, was recently presented at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark, followed by the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (2023–2024). Recent solo museum exhibitions of the artist’s work include Dana Schutz: Eating Atom Bombs, held at the Transformer Station, Cleveland (2018), which debuted a series of paintings by the artist; an exhibition of new work at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); a career survey at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2015); and a comprehensive solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, England (2013; traveled to Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, through 2014).

In 2011, the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, presented Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels, a retrospective featuring paintings and drawings created by the artist over the previous decade. The show subsequently traveled to the Miami Art Museum and the Denver Art Museum in 2012 to 2013. The artist’s work has been the subject of additional solo presentations at institutions worldwide, among them the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2012); Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2011); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2010); and Museo d’arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy (2010). In 2006, the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, presented Dana Schutz: Paintings 2002–2005, which later that same year traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. The artist’s first solo museum presentation was held in 2004 at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas.

In 2023, Dana Schutz, the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s work, was published by Phaidon Press, with essays by Dan Nadel and Lynne Tillman and an interview with the artist by Hamza Walker.

Schutz has been represented by David Zwirner since 2020. Her first solo exhibition with the gallery, Dana Schutz: Jupiter’s Lottery, was presented in 2023 in New York. In 2024, Dana Schutz: The Sea and All Its Subjects was on view at David Zwirner Paris.

Schutz’s work is held in numerous institutional collections, including the Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Cleveland Institute of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Museo d’arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; Rubell Museum, Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Kansas; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.