Andrea Blum: BIOTA
September 4 – October 26, 2024
Opening Reception: September 4, 6–8 pm
205 Hudson Gallery, Hunter College Art Galleries
205 Hudson Street (at Canal St.)
New York, NY 10013
Andrea Blum has worked at the intersection of art, design, and architecture for over forty years. She began making temporary installations in the mid-1970s and in the decades since, she has created numerous public artworks for cities and universities across the United States and Europe. These include plazas, parks, mobile homes, libraries, an aviary, and sets for a Paris opera. Her exhibition designs for museums and galleries reconfigure how viewers perceive familiar spaces and one another. Blum’s sculptures frequently place bodies in proximity without the ability to touch. A tension between autonomy and intimate connection runs throughout the works.
In BIOTA, Blum presents an exhibition environment with works from 2008–2024 that center on constructions of the natural world and relations between humans and non-humans. These include a series of digital images that simulate organic matter, experiments with furniture-like objects for interspecies observation, and videos of wildlife in which animal desire parallels our own. In these psychologically charged works, Blum uses shifts of perspective and scale to explore entanglements of the natural and social realms.
Andrea Blum: BIOTA is curated by Jenny Jaskey and organized by Katie Hood Morgan, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Hunter College Art Galleries. Graduate curatorial fellows: Haley Kane and Antonia Oliver.
This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Arthur and Carol Kaufman Goldberg Foundation To-Life Curatorial Workshop Fund, the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, the Red Painters Fund, the Judith Whitney Godwin Foundation for the Arts, Jill Brienza, Agnes Gund, The Katcher Family Foundation Inc., and other private donors. The publication has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Estate of Tony Feher, and a grant from the Wolf Kahn Foundation and the Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation on behalf of artists Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn.
PUBLICATION
In Spring 2025, Hunter College and Gregory R. Miller & Co. will co-publish an illustrated monograph that gives an overview of Andrea Blum’s work from the 1970s to the present. Designed by Joseph Logan Studio, it will include texts by Catherine Grout, Jenny Jaskey, Pam Lins, Michael Lobel, Sarah Oppenheimer, and a conversation between the artist and Allan Schwartzman.
Andrea Blum Public Lecture
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Public Opening Reception
Wednesday, September 4, 6–8 pm
205 Hudson Gallery, Hunter College Art Galleries
205 Hudson Street (at Canal St.)
New York, NY 10013
Andrea Blum Public Lecture
Followed by a conversation with exhibition curator Jenny Jaskey
Wednesday, October 9, 7pm
2nd Floor Flexspace, 205 Hudson Street (at Canal St.)
New York, NY 10013
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Andrea Blum (b. 1950, New York) has been engaged in the discourse between art and architecture since the 1970s. She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland (2021); La Conservera Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Murcia, Spain (2012); Stroom Den Haag, Netherlands (2004); and Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (1999), among others. Blum has designed numerous public commissions, including for the University of Pennsylvania (2018); Mudam, Luxembourg (2008); and the 51st Venice Biennale, Italy (2005). She was set designer for a Gaetano Donizetti Opera, commissioned by Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris (2013), and in 2005 was named Chevalier, Order of Arts and Letters, by the French Minister of Culture. Blum has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, Graham Foundation Fellowship, SJ Weiler Award, Art Matters, NYSCA and NEA Fellowships, and a Design award from the American Institute of Architects. Blum holds an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Blum taught in the Department of Art and Art History at Hunter College for over thirty years and retired in 2023 as Associate Chair of Studio.
ABOUT THE HUNTER COLLEGE ART GALLERIES
Part of the college’s Department of Art and Art History, the Hunter College Art Galleries have contributed to New York City’s vital cultural landscape since their inception over a quarter of a century ago. The galleries provide a space for critical engagement with art and pedagogy, bringing together historical scholarship, contemporary artistic practice, and experimental methodology. The 205 Hudson Gallery on the department’s MFA Studio Art Campus in Tribeca is dedicated to presenting exhibitions and programming that engage issues critical to contemporary art and artists. In Spring semesters, the gallery also hosts a series of MFA thesis exhibitions. Located on Hunter’s main campus at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery presents research-driven historical exhibitions that provide new scholarship on important and often under-represented artists and art movements. The Hunter East Harlem Gallery, located in the Silberman School of Social Work at 119th Street and 3rd Avenue, is dedicated to collaborative social practice and art and artists engaged with issues relevant to the East Harlem community and to the city more broadly.
PRESS INQUIRIES
E-mail Aleeq Kroshian, aleeq.kroshian@hunter.cuny.edu
