Art Fact Friday #36 Dawoud Bey

An artist recoginized for engaging and compelling portraits, the artist investigates formal and material methodologies which creates works that focus intently on the communities seen in the photographs. The artist is respected as an educator and photographer; as well as for the empathy and complexity depicted in the subjects. The artist has shown in a number of solo and group exhibition at the Walker Art Center, the Queens Museum of Art, the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Addison Gallery of American Art , the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Indianapolis Museum of Art,the Milwaukee Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art,George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum, SFMOMA, the High Museum in Atlanta, and New York, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Born November, 25, 1953 in Queens, New York; Dawoud Bey began his carrer with the series, Harlem, USA, in 1975.These photographs would be shown in his first solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, 1979. Bey studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1977 to 1978 and received a BFA in Photography from Empire State College in 1990. He earned a masters degree at the Yale University School of Art 1993. In 1995 a survey of Bey’s work organized by The Walker Art Center, which traveled throughout the United States and Europe.

His next exhibition Dawoud Bey opened at the Queens Museum of Art, in 1998. His works were also included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Bey followed this with Dawoud Bey: The Chicago Projectpresented at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art in 2003. In 2004 he exhibited Dawoud Bey: Detroit Portraits at the Detroit Institute of Art. The Aperture Foundation commissioned Class Pictures in 2007. The exhibition opened at the Addison Gallery of American Art and toured the country for four years, showing at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Milwaukee Art Museum etc.

The first complete showing of the Harlem, USA photographs since the 1979 exhibition, opened at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. His series Birmingham Project opened at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 2013. This exhibit would show again in 2016 at George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film. In 2019, the Art Institute of Chicago exhibited Dawoud Bey: Night Coming Tenderly, Black. An American Project curated by the Whitney Museum and SFMOMA displayed from 2019-2021, later showing at the High Museum in Atlanta, and New York City. Grand Rapids Art Museum opened a showing of Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems works, the exhibition traveled to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2023. 2023 to 2024, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts ehxibited Dawoud Bey: Elegy.

Dawoud Bey currently serves as a Professor of Art at Columbia College Chicago. He has been highlighted in a number of publications, including Aperture, 2007, Yale University Press, 2012, Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, 2012, the Birmingham Museum of Art, 2013, the University of Texas Press, 2018, Yale University Press and SFMOMA , 2020.

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