Biography 

New York–based artist Ann Messner has focused her work since the 1970s on an investigation of the intersections between private life/space and public/civic experience, concentrating on the relationship between the individual and the larger social body as encountered within public space or discourse. Her projects have traversed boundaries between the directly political and cultural, blurring mistaken distinctions between the two. Ann was the creative director for dis- arming images, produced and distributed by the collective Artists Against the War, 2005. Other individual projects include or- acle, Wesleyan University, 2005; outpost, a public installation, New York, 2008–2009; and the tabloids penitentiary, distributed at Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, 2006; and the disasters of war, Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University, 2006 and The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 2008. Recent group exhibitions include The Real Estate Show: Was Then 1980, What Now? 2014, Fuentes and Cuchifritos Galleries, New York; Petites Résistances, Hans-Peter-Zimmer Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany; Women Choose Women (Again), Visual Arts Center of New Jersey; Act/OUT, Onomatopee, Eindhoven, Netherlands; Global Fight Club: Aspects of Terror in Contemporary Art, Meinblau, Berlin; and Art, Access & Decay: New York 1975–1985, Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles. Ann is a recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Gottlieb Foundation Fellowship, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, a Henry Moore International Fellowship, an NEA and two New York Foundation for the Arts awards in sculpture. She was a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, and was appointed a Senior Fellow at the Princeton University Council on the Humanities. Ann has taught at MIT’s Visual Arts Program, Hunter College, and Maryland Institute of Art. She is currently a full professor and coordinator of MFA Integrated Practices at Pratt Institute.