U.Va. Arts Board Selects Visual Artist Tom Burckhardt for 2011-12 Residency

August 30, 2011 — The student-run University of Virginia Arts Board has selected New York visual artist Tom Burckhardt as this year's visiting artist.

Each year, the board selects an outstanding artist, attraction, performance or exhibition to visit the Grounds and work closely with the arts community. The selection rotates among music, the visual arts and drama. 

Burckhardt, who works in numerous media with a focus on painting, will visit the University several times during the academic year for lectures, exhibitions of his work and the creation of a special installation.

The installation, a collaboration with studio art students, will focus on an artistic interpretation of the Brooks Natural History Museum, which occupied Brooks Hall from 1877 through the 1940s. The installation will be exhibited Feb. 24 through March 30 in the Ruffin Gallery.

"I am excited by the idea of a collaborative project," Burckhardt said, "one that shakes them out of the privacy of their studios, a parallel practice that blurs the borders of sculpture, painting and drawing. I'm convinced that this collaboration process will result in a final piece that bursts with energy, both from the individual contributions and through the power of the massed sum of its parts."

Burckhardt is known for abstract paintings, often bringing a quirky approach to creating environments in which he blurs the line between painting and sculpture. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows internationally and has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America and The Village Voice.

His most recent solo exhibition, "Louder Milk," was at the Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y., this spring.

Burckhardt has received numerous awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Foundation Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Grant and a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His work is in the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Burckhardt earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the State University of New York at Purchase and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

Arts Board events in conjunction with Burckhardt's visit include:
  • Artist lecture by Tom Burckhardt, Sept. 13, 6:30 p.m., Campbell Hall, room 153
  • "Thomas Jefferson's Indian Hall and the Brooks Museum," by Elizabeth Chew, curator at Monticello, and "The Life and Death of the Brooks Wooly Mammoth: That Conspicuous and Portentous Effigy," by Jeffrey Hantman, U.Va. associate professor of anthropology, Sept. 14, 6:30 p.m., Campbell Hall, room 158.
  • Exhibition: "Tom Burckhardt's Paintings," Jan. 19-June 3, U.Va. Art Museum.
For information contact studio art professor Megan Marlatt at 434-924-7206 or mmarlatt@virginia.edu.

Media Contact

Jane Ford

U.Va. Media Relations