Michael Asher
California
USA Broad Fellow, Visual Arts

Michael Asher is one of the most important and influential conceptual artists in the United States. Since the late 1960s he has created projects that examine how museums and galleries display art and how institutional practices affect our understanding of art. Rather than creating objects, he works with the museum’s architecture and physical structure, a strategy known as institutional critique. Asher’s “post-studio” classes at California Institute of the Arts, as well as his writings, have influenced a generation of diverse artists—including painters, sculptors, and political artists—encouraging them always to question the social and historical contexts in which they work. A.C.

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Portrait photo courtesy Michael Asher
Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA (January 26–April 12, 2008)
View East, near rear entry of exhibition space showing metal wall studs in the installation and tear away hand out sheets listing floor plans, dates and titles for previous exhibition installations at the Santa Monica Museum of Art from 1998 to December 2007; Photograph by Grant Mudford