Trevor Paglen was born in 1974 in Camp Springs, Maryland. Trained as a geographer and photographer, Paglen makes the invisible visible by documenting the American surveillance state of the 21st ...

Art21 is the world’s leading source to learn directly from the artists of our time. The mission of Art21 is to educate and expand access to contemporary art through the production of documentary films ...

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. In his youth, he studied crafts and learned how to build guitars, furniture, and canoes through practical training and instruction. After earning ...

Abigail DeVille was born in 1981 in New York, where she lives and works. Maintaining a long-standing interest in marginalized people and places, DeVille creates site-specific immersive installations ...

Rashid Johnson was born in 1977 in Chicago, Illinois, and lives and works in New York. Johnson, who got his start as a photographer, works across media—including video, sculpture, painting, and ...

Rackstraw Downes was born in Kent, England in 1939. Often described as a realist painter, Downes prefers not to use that term. He views the act of seeing and the art of representation as culturally ...

Theaster Gates was born in Chicago in 1973. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures ...

Alejandro Almanza Pereda was born in 1977 in Mexico City. He formerly worked in New York, and currently lives and works between the United States and Mexico, maintaining his practice in both locales.

William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1955. He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1973–76), Johannesburg Art Foundation (1976–78), and studied mime and ...

Elizabeth Murray was born in Chicago in 1940. She earned a BFA at the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. A pioneer in painting, Murray’s distinctively ...

Pepón Osorio was born in 1955 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1975, Osorio left Puerto Rico and moved to the South Bronx in New York City, ...

Matthew Ritchie discusses the influence of John Milton’s 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost in his 2008 exhibition The Morning Line. RITCHIE: Paradise Lost is one of the great books that nobody’s ever read.