Nancy Goldring (born January 25, 1945) is an American artist. She developed a way of making art that combines graphic, photographic, and projected material, presented as a non-narrative series of images that she calls "foto-projections." She currently lives and works in New York City, and is a professor at Montclair State University.
Early life and education
Goldring grew up in University City, Missouri where her father was professor of cardiology at Washington University. She was educated at University City High School, received a BA in Art History at Smith College, and an MA in Fine Art at NYU. She received her first Fulbright Grant to Italy immediately following Smith College.
While a graduate student,she was a co-founder of Sculpture in the Environment (SITE), an organization of artists dedicated to developing public art projects. After leaving SITE she began developing her own work, although she continued to write about public sculpture. Together with Michael Webb of Archigram and Giuliano Fiorenzoli she collaborated on an exhibition, Image of the Home at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City.
Goldring's work is unique in its incorporation of drawing, models, photography, and slide projection. She began presenting the work as large slide projection installations, suggesting the intricate nature of human perception by re-ordering visual information to propose irreconcilable time frames, shifting vantage points, changing moods, and memory traces. Each image represents one of the many possible ways of evoking a place or a moment; and the series altogether suggests the complex way we experience the world. Seen this way, the sequence seems to excavate a real or imagined archaeological site thereby slowly revealing a rich sedimentation of an irrecoverable past.
Her archive is held by the Smithsonian Institution.
Nancy Goldring has worked on numerous collaborations including,
SITEImage of the HomeAureola with Juan Downey, Giuliano Fiorenzioli, and Michael WebbStage set design with Ze'Eva Cohen, "Ode"Projections: Place without Description, Devi Art Foundation, The Sarai Center for Developing Studies, Delhi, 2012-2013Vanishing Points: Nancy Goldring (Punti di Fuga), Galleria Martini e Ronchetti, Genoa Sept. 2013Nancy Goldring, Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY, 2010Lo Studiolo di Nancy Goldring, Palazetto di Eucherio Sanvitale, Parma, Italy, 2008Palimpsest, Gallery 138, New York City, 2006Palinsesto, Palazzo Pigorini, Parma, Italy, 2005, catalog with essays by David Levi StraussFoto Fo, International Month of Photography, Galerie Z, Bratislava, Czech Republic,2003Legend, Lyman Allen Museum, New London, CT, 2002Foto Fest, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX, 2002Sites and Sets, Baruch College, New York, 2001Distillations, Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL, 2000The Ocular Proof, ACTA International, Rome Italy, 1996Speculations, R. Duane Reed Gallery, St. Louis, MO, 1996Foto-Projections, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, 1993Dream Stills, Jayne H. Baum Gallery, New York, 1993Images of Myanmar: Inle Lake and Pagan, Arts for Transit, sponsored by MTA, Grand Central Station, New York, 1992Cibachrome Foto-Projections, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO, 1992Drawings With Foto-Projections, Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, March 1991Nancy Goldring: Recent Works, Cox Gallery, Drury College, Springfield, MO, 1988Recurrences, A&M Artworks, New York,1984Studio on Stromboli, Mississippi Museum of Art, The Open Gallery, Jackson, MS, 1983Drawings with Foto-Projections, The Herzliya Museum, The American Cultural Center of Tel Aviv, 1981-1983Trepidation of the Spheres: Drawings with Foto-Projections, Camera Club, New York, 1981Drawings with Foto-Projections, SOHO 20, New York, 1980Drawings with Foto-Projections, Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, 1977Nancy Goldring: Drawings, Comfort Gallery, Haverford College, Haverford, PA, 1976Prime Matter, Teckningsmuseet (Drawing Museum), Herrstrom, Laholm Sweden, 2016Night Tide, Diet Gallery, Miami, 2014Maravee Anima, Udine Italy, 2013Classical Mythology in Modern and Contemporary Art, William Benton Museum of Art, CT, 2012Everywhere/Nowhere, The Spiritual Temperament in Current American Art, Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi, India, 2009Bridging Cultures Through Art, Les Atlassides Gallery, Marrakech, Morrocco, 2006New York New York, Smith College Museum of Art, 2005Waking Dreams, University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, VA, 2004Selections from the Permanent Collection, International Center of Photography, New York, 1998-1999Fresh Work 2, Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL, 1998The Avon Collection, International Center for Photography, New York, 1997New in the Nineties, Katonah Museum, Katonah, NY, 1996Center of Photography, Tokyo, Japan; Osaka World Trade Center Museum, 1996Ellis Island: Echoes From a Nation's Past, Aperture Foundation, New York, 1989; Palazzo Cini, Ferrara, Italy, 1993American Art Today: New Directions, The Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, 1991Selections 5, Polaroid at Fotokine, Cologne, Germany, 1990Art and the Law, The West Collection, Traveling exhibition 1990-91Constructed Spaces, Photographic Resource Center with Boston Architectural Center, 1990The Great Photo Show, Photo-Fest, Houston, TX, 1990,Aperture Photographers, Burden Gallery, New York, 1989-Jan 1990Sequence (Con) Sequence, Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, New York,1989.Photography of Invention: Pictures of the Eighties, National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C., 1989Behind the Scenes: Photographers' Devices, White Columns Gallery, New York, 1989Ideas in Imagery: Postmodern Photography, R.H. Love Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1988Photography on the Edge, Haggarty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI, 1988Poetic Injury: the Surrealist Legacy in Postmodern Photography, The Alternative Museum, New York, 1987-1988. Cat. by Roger Denson and Rosalind KraussIndependent American Photographers, International Center for Photography, Warsaw, Krakow, Kantorwice, Gdansk, Poland, 1980The Photographer's Hand, The International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, 1979, traveled by S.I.T.E.S. 1979-81Women Artists from New York, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1978Goldring's work can be found in more than 30 public collections around the world, including
School of Nite, Peter Lamborn Wilson and Nancy Goldring (Spuyten Duyvil Press: Jan 2016)Nancy Goldring: Punti di fuga, altri paesaggi, Nancy Goldring, Paolo Barbaro, Michael Taussig, and Carlo Vannicola (Il Geko Edizioni, 2012)Palimpsest: fotografie di Nancy Goldring, Nancy Goldring, David Levi Strauss, Paolo Barbaro (Gabriele Mazzotta, 2005)Distillations, Nancy Goldring, Alison Divine Nordstrom, and Ellen Handy,(Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach Community College, 2000)Goldring has been the recipient of awards and grants from such institutions as the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the American Institute of Architecture, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. She has received multiple Fulbright Awards to Italy, Sri Lanka, and India, as well as awards from Montclair State University.
