John Newman (sculptor)

John Newman is an American sculptor. He was born in Flushing, Queens in 1952. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College (1973). He attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1972 and received his M.F.A. in 1975 from the Yale School of Art. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT from 1975 to 1978. He is based in New York City.

Career
Newman came of age as a sculptor in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He has had over 50 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. His sculptures, drawings, and prints are represented in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the Albertina in Vienna, and the Storm King Art Center, New York, among many others. Newman is the recipient of many awards and residencies, including the Rome Prize, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and a Senior Research Fulbright Grant to India. In 2015, he completed a residency at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Newman is the former director of graduate studies in sculpture at the Yale School of Art. He currently teaches at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has been commissioned to do several large-scale sculptures for the City of Richmond, Virginia, Dai Nippon in Tokyo, Storm King Art Center, and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey.

In print
In his interview with Newman, which was published in the April 2012 issue of The Brooklyn Rail, its co-founder Phong Bui addressed his use of different materials and techniques, including Calcutta basket weaving, Bengali brass casting, and hariko techniques, to mix them up with practices from the West. In response, Newman said:

"I want to be very careful not to be a cultural tourist! I’m the filter of all of those experiences, which only occurs after I am back in the studio. [...] traveling allowed me to step out of the concealed contradictions that are embedded within a system; in this case the system is the art world, where so many of my contemporaries were making art about art, or how art connects to larger spheres of contexts, meaning the gallery space, the gallery system, or art’s possible social relevancy..."

In his Selected Writings, the artist Carroll Dunham notes about Newman's work:

"Newman’s mature work has evolved in methodical opposition to these commandments. It is intimate, materially omnivorous, hyper-spatially curvy, dissonantly evocative, eccentrically constructed, and defiantly connected to a notion of sculpture as abstract statuary, a three-dimensional site of anthropomorphized contemplation (the sort of art Ad Reinhardt described as “something you back into when you’re looking at a painting”)."

Solo exhibitions
Newman has exhibited his work since 1977. His earliest national shows were hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center Mall, New York and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 2016, the Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art and Design, in Columbus, Ohio, hosted “Possible in Principle.” In 2013, the Jaffe-Friede Gallery at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire hosted “Everything is on the Table.” Newman's exhibition “Instruments of Argument” was hosted by the New York Studio School Gallery in 2009 and in 2007, the Sarah Moody Gallery of Art at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, presented an exhibition as well. In 2005, his exhibition entitled "Monkey Wrenches and Household Saints" was shown at the Clifford Gallery at Colgate University (catalogue). In addition, he exhibited at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (1999), Grounds for Sculpture, Johnson Atelier, Mercerville, New Jersey (1998), Tyler Graphics, Mt. Kisco, New York (catalogue) (1995), Ft. Wayne Museum of Art, Ft. Wayne, Indiana (1993); Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock (catalogue)(1993), Reed College, Portland, Oregon (1981), and many others.

Statement
In 2013, Newman stated: "People often misunderstand my work as surreal, because they see these disparate things. And because it’s not seemingly geometric or representational, it’s something that is not easily categorizable.”

Works in public collections

 * Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
 * Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio
 * Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
 * The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria
 * Albright-Knox Art Gallery
 * Arkansas Art Center
 * Art Institute of Chicago
 * Bank of Boston
 * Belger Family Foundation, Kansas City, MO
 * Boca Raton Art Museum
 * The Brooklyn Museum
 * Chase Manhattan Bank
 * Chemical Bank
 * Colby College Museum, Maine
 * Dallas Museum of Art
 * Dannheiser Foundation
 * Department of Transportation, Washington, DC
 * Deutsche Bank
 * Des Moines Art Center
 * Farnsworth Museum of Art, Maine
 * Fidelity Investments
 * First Bank System, Inc., Minneapolis
 * The Fogg Art Museum
 * Fort Wayne Museum
 * General Mills Corporation
 * Grand Rapids Museum
 * High Museum
 * Honolulu Museum of Art
 * Hood Museum, Dartmouth College
 * Joslyn Museum, Omaha, NE
 * Library of Congress, DC
 * List Center for the Visual Arts, MIT
 * Los Angeles County Museum of Art
 * McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
 * Mellon Bank, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 * Metropolitan Museum of Art
 * Minneapolis Institute of Arts
 * Mississippi Museum
 * Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
 * The Morgan Library
 * Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 * Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
 * Museum of Modern Art
 * The Nasher Collection, Dallas
 * The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
 * National Academy Museum
 * National Gallery of Berlin
 * National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
 * Nelson Atkins Museum
 * New York Public Library
 * Orlando Museum of Art
 * Parrish Museum
 * Palm Springs Art Museum
 * Philadelphia Museum
 * Portland Museum of Art, Maine
 * Prudential Insurance
 * Sammlung Hoffman, Berlin
 * Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, NE
 * Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich
 * St. Louis Art Museum
 * Storm King Art Center
 * Southwestern Bell
 * Tang Museum, Sarasota Springs, NY
 * Tate Gallery, London
 * University of Colorado/Boulder Art Museum
 * Walker Art Center
 * Whitney Museum of American Art
 * Worcester Art Museum
 * Yale Art Gallery