Hot contemporary artist Mark Bradford to represent US at Venice Biennale
Three US institutions recruited the artist for what one museum director calls the greatest honour in the contemporary art world
Mark Bradford is arguably the hottest contemporary artist in the US right now and the Rose Art Museum has just announced he will represent the country at the 2017 Venice Biennale, the expansive and prestigious exhibition staged in Italy every two years.
That Bradford was selected is not shocking. He was recruited by three art museums, he says, to represent the country and has been featured in major exhibitions across the US.
He’s now working on a series of paintings set to go on display in the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington next year, a work that will be the largest he’s created yet.
More surprising is the fact that he chose the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, a contemporary museum with a stunning collection but which, only six years ago, was deemed expendable by the university’s then president.
“Being awarded the pavilion is the greatest honour in the contemporary art world,” says Christopher Bedford, the Rose’s director. “If that doesn’t spell the end of the Rose crisis period and suggest a sparking new beginning, I’m not sure what would.”
Bradford, 53, says that he didn’t know all that much about the Rose controversy, which ended when the university agreed not to consider selling any of its collection, which is valued at more than US$350 million and includes works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Willem de Kooning.
He did know Bedford well. They met a decade ago when Bedford, now 39, was an assistant curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. After Bedford took over the Rose in 2012, the first work he purchased was Bradford’s sprawling, mixed-media canvas, Father, You Have Murdered Me.