Petah Coyne is a contemporary American sculptor and photographer. Some of her works are in the permanent collections of museums and galleries such as the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art

High Museum of Art

The High Museum of Art , located in Atlanta, is the leading art museum in the Southeastern United States and one of the most-visited art museums in the world. Located on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district, the High is a division of the Woodruff Arts Center.-History:The Museum was...

 in Atlanta, the Corcoran Gallery of Art

Corcoran Gallery of Art

The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...

, and the Nasher Museum of Art

Nasher Museum of Art

The Nasher Museum of Art is the art museum of Duke University, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and opened on October 2, 2005...

 at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

. Her most recent solo exhibition at the Mass MoCA (May 29, 2010) features large-scale mixed-media sculptures along with silver gelatin print

Gelatin silver print

Gelatin silver prints were the dominant photographic process nearly from the period of their introduction in the 1880s until the 1960s when they were eclipsed by consumer color photography. As such, the gelatin silver or black-and-white print represents a primary form of visual documentation in the...

  photographs. Coyne layers wax-soaked materials such as pearls, ribbons and silk flowers into large sculptural forms, often incorporating taxidermy

Taxidermy

Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...

 birds and animals.

"The works in this largest retrospective of the artist’s work to date range
from her earlier and more abstract sculptures using industrial materials to
newer works made of delicate wax. All of Coyne’s works take inspiration from
personal stories, film, literature and political events. Coyne takes these sources
and applies a Baroque sense of decadent refinement, imbuing her work with a
magical quality to evoke intensely personal associations.
Together these diverse yet intimately connected periods of Coyne’s practice
make evident an evolution, which highlights the artist’s own blend of symbolism
alongside an innovative use of materials including black sand, car parts, wax,
satin ribbons, trees, silk flowers, and taxidermy."

- Mass MoCA

According to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art,

- Petah Coyne March 24, 1994. In her studio, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at the Bushwick inlet, on the southeast by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg, on the north by Newtown Creek and Long Island City, Queens at the...

Coyne was born in Oklahoma City

Oklahoma city

Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...

 in 1953. She lives and works in New York and New Jersey.

Selected Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions
2010

Petah Coyne: Everything That Rises Must Converge. Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA

2004

Petah Coyne. Cincinnati Art Museum

1999

Fairy Tales. Butler Gallery, Kilkenny Castle, Ireland; catalogue

1998

Fairy Tales. Galerie Lelong, New York

1997

Black/White/Black. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., (travelling)

1996

Petah Coyne, Black and White, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and High Museum of Art, Atlanta; catalogue

Photographs, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

1994

Sculpture, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

1992

Petah Coyne, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art; catalogue

1989

Grand Lobby Installation, Brooklyn Museum of Art

1987

Untitled Installation, Sculpture Center, New York

Special Projects, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York

Group Exhibitions
2001

Artists Take on Detroit: Projects for the Tricentennial. Detroit, 2001

2000

Glen Dimplex Artist’s Award, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; catalogue

1999

Millennium Messages, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibitions, organized by the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York; catalogue

Domestic Pleasures, Galerie Lelong, New York

Drawing in the Present Tense, Parsons School of Design, New York; catalogue

1998

Preview, Review, Galerie Lelong, New York

House of Wax, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

1997

Selections from the Collections, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Permanent Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

Neuberger Museum of Art 1997 Biennial Exhibition of Public Art, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York; catalogue

1996

A Selection of Gifts to the Collection from Lily Auchincloss, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Partners in Printmaking, Works from Solo Impressions, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

1995

Object Lessons: Feminine Dialogues with the Surreal, Massachusetts College of Art, Huntington Gallery, Boston

1994

In the Lineage of Eva Hesse, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut

Prints from Solo Impressions, The College of Wooster Art Museum, Ohio; catalogue

1993

Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition of Drawings, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

"Monumental Propaganda, Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow

1992

MiaHaus, Thread Waxing Space, New York

Natural Forces/Human Observations, Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri

1991

Award in the Visual Arts, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

1990

Art Contemporain, Visions – 90, Centre International d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; catalogue

Detritus: Transformation and Re-Construction, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York

1989

The Emerging Figure, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; catalogue

1987

Elements, Whitney Museum of American Art, Equitable Center, New York

Sculpture, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

Standing Ground: Sculpture by American Women, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; catalogue

Alternative Supports: Contemporary Sculpture on the Wall, David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; catalogue

1986

Bodies and Dreams, White Columns, New York

Sydney Blum/Petah Coyne/Beverly Fishman, P.S. 122, New York

Nature Observed, Danforth Museum of Art, Boston

Paradise & Purgatory: West Meets East, Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1985

Toy Show, BACA/The Brooklyn Arts Council

1984

Holiday Invitational, A.I.R. Gallery, New York

External links

• Petah Coyne on Galerie Lelong
• Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin on SMOCA
• Petah Coyne at MASS MoCA May 29, 2010
• Petah Coyne at MASS MoCA April 11, 2011