SAIC Professor Michelle Grabner is one of the most prominent women in the art world today. In her roles as artist, critic, educator, and curator, she engages in every aspect of artistic production and shapes our cultural landscape.

In 2014 Grabner co-curated the Whitney Biennial, the most influential survey of the state of contemporary art in the United States. As one of three curators, Grabner presented her vision on the fourth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. New Yorker magazine described her presentation as “...by far, the most visually appealing—it’s practically buoyant.” Grabner also drew praise from the New York Times, which noted, “She mostly chose artists in mid- or mid-late career, many of them women. Good idea.”

Grabner is widely known for her own abstract metalpoint works and paintings of textile patterns appropriated from everyday domestic fabric. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions, including at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, and most recently in a solo exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Her first comprehensive solo exhibition, I Work From Home, was at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in 2013–14.

An appointment as curator of the 2016 Biennial at the Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland, Oregon, speaks to the growing reach of Grabner’s voice and vision in defining what we call Beautiful/Work.