Sam Durant

Education

Durant received a BFA in sculpture in 1986 from the Massachusetts College of Art and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

1900s

His work of the 90s was inspired largely by the work of Robert Smithson, an artist well known for his interest in history and entropy. Durant's work has been widely exhibited internationally and in the United States. He has had solo museum exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium, and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand. His work has been included in the Panamá, Sydney, Venice, and Whitney Biennials. Durant shows with several galleries including Blum & Poe in Los Angeles, Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, Praz-Delavallade in Paris/Los Angeles and Sadie Coles HQ in London. His work has been extensively written about including seven monographic catalogs and books.

2000s

In 2005, his exhibition "Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington D.C." was shown at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. This work derived out of a residency he was conducting at the Walker Art Center in 2002. He reproduced 30 Indian massacre monuments that are based on similarities to the massive obelisk Washington monument. In 2006, he compiled and edited a comprehensive monograph of Black Panther artist Emory Douglas’ work. His recent curatorial credits include Eat the Market at the Los Angeles County Museum and Black Panther: the Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the New Museum in New York. He has co-organized numerous group shows and artists benefits and is a co-founder of Transforma, a cultural rebuilding collective project in New Orleans. In addition, he was a finalist for the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize and has received a United States Artists Broad Fellowship and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant.

Scaffold

In June 2017, Durant erected a two-story wooden beam sculpture entitled Scaffold for display in the garden of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The sculpture was intended to represent "the gallows used in seven hangings from 1859 to 2006 sanctioned by the U.S. government", as well as "America's history of state violence and its use of the death penalty".

Scaffold had previously been displayed at documenta in Germany in 2012, and at Jupiter Artland in Scotland in 2014.

The sculpture elicited protests from Native American groups prior to being put on public display, and delayed the opening of the gallery's public art garden. Protesters were offended by a reference in the sculpture to the 1862 hanging of 38 Dakota Indians at Mankato, Minnesota. Durant agreed to dismantle Gallows, after which it was burned by Dakota tribal elders. "I made Scaffold as a learning space for people like me, white people who have not suffered the effects of a white supremacist society and who may not consciously know that it exists" said Durant, "white artists need to address issues of white supremacy".

Exhibitions

His work can be found in many public collections including The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, Tate Modern in London, Project Row Houses in Houston, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Durant teaches art at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.