Margia Kramer
| Margia Kramer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1939 Brooklyn, New York City, NY |
| Nationality | American |
| Awards | National Endowment for the Arts (1982, 1989), National Endowment for the Humanities (1981), New York Foundation for the Arts (1987), New York State Council on the Arts (1986, 1981), Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities (1988), Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation (1991), Jerome Foundation (1985) |
Margia Kramer (born 1939) is an American documentary visual artist, writer and activist living in New York who, in the 1970s and 80s, helped pioneer the creation of interdisciplinary mixed-media works that recontextualized primary texts to address feminist, censorship, civil liberties, and civil rights issues. Kramer was among the founding members of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D, 1980–88) (along with Lucy Lippard, members of Group Material, Jerry Kearns, Greg Sholette and others), an activist group of politically engaged artists and writers who published “Upfront” magazine and gathered an important archive of works from the period that is now housed in the library of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.[1]
Life and work
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939, Kramer received her B.A. in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, studying printmaking, photography, and painting with Ad Reinhardt and Burgoyne Diller. She received an M.A. in History of Art from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she studied renaissance printmaking with Colin Eisler, and was a student of Edward Laning at the Arts Students League. In the 1960s and 70's, she participated in performance workshops with Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti.
From 1977 through 1989, Kramer had 17 one-person shows and video installations at a range of venues including the Museum of Modern Art (1981), Whitney Museum of American Art (1984), and Rotunda Gallery (1988) in New York City and the Institute for Contemporary Art (1980) in London. In addition, her work has been included in numerous group shows at the Dia Art Foundation Center for the Arts and Printed Matter (1993), P.S. 1 (1992), the Whitney Museum of American Art (1989), Artist's Space[2] (1979) and others. Kramer's videos and installation pieces are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum, New York Public Library, and in the private collection of Albert and Vera List, among other private and public collections.
Kramer is widely known for her early explorations of state secrecy and surveillance in relation to the arts, using documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act of the United States of America. Using previously classified files from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kramer made a series of videos, documentary books, and installations on subjects of state counterintelligence programs ("cointelpro") such as the actress Jean Seaberg[3] and the mixed media artist Andy Warhol,[4][5] as well as on the military industrial complex.[6]
Awards
Kramer has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982, 1989), National Endowment for the Humanities (1981), New York Foundation for the Arts (1987), New York State Council on the Arts (1986, 1981), Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities (1988), Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation (1991), and the Jerome Foundation (1985), and she held a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in Fine Arts (1963-4). She was an artist-in-residence at the Yaddo, Blue Mountain, and MacDowell colonies during the 1980s.
Notes
- ↑ http://gregorysholette.com/writings/writingpdfs/14_collectography.pdf
- ↑ http://artistsspace.org/exhibitions/part-i-secret/
- ↑ https://printedmatter.org/catalogue/moreinfo.cfm?title_id=82661
- ↑ Kramer, Margia. "The Warhol File," The Village Voice (New York), 5/17/88
- ↑ O'Pray, Michael (ed.) "Andy Warhol: Film Factory," London (British Film Institute) 1989
- ↑ http://listart.mit.edu/node/800#.UXyY_xltyis
References
- Ashton, Dore. American Art Since 1945, New York 1982, p.l9Of
- Brentano, Robyn, Mark Savitt (ed.). 112 Workshop/112 Greene Street, New York 1981, p. 250f
- Cieri, Marie, Dana Friis Hansen, Katy Kline, Helaine Posner (contributors). 19 Projects, Artists-in-Residence at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Mass, 1996, p. 133-144
- Lippard, Lucy R. A Different War, Vietnam in Art, Seattle (Whatcom Museum of History and Art), 1990 p. 111,114.
- Lippard, Lucy R. Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change, New York 1984, p.l40f
- Okun, Rob A. (ed.) The Rosenbergs, Collected Visions of Artists and Writers, New York 1988, p. 31,157, Plate 40
- Podesta, Patti (ed.). Resolution, A Critique of Video Art, Los Angeles 1986, p. 76 84
- Rosen, Randy and Cathy Brawer (eds.) Making Their Mark: Women Artists Move Into the Mainstream 1970 to 1985, New York 1989, p. 146f, 249f, 287
- Wye, Deborah. Committed to Print. Social and Political Themes in Recent American Printed Art, New York 1988, p. 30, 34, 108
CATALOGUES:
- Chomsky, Noam et al. "Disinformation, The Manufacture of Consent," Alternative Museum, New York (New York 1985)
- Gumpert, Lynn. "Framed," San Francisco Artspace (San Francisco, 1989)
- Hanhardt, John. "The Whitney Museum of American Art New American Filmmakers Series #15, Margia Kramer, Progress(Memory) 1983 84" (New York 1984)
- Hills Patricia. "Social Concern in the Eighties, A New England Perspective," Boston University Art Gallery (Boston 1984)
- Kolpan, Steven C. "The 1982 CAPS Video/Multi Media Festival, Radical Departures" (New York 1982) p. 9f
- Lippard, Lucy R. "Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists," Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (London 1980)