Michelle Grabner

Michelle Grabner is an artist, writer, and curator based in Wisconsin. She is an alumna of the Arts/Industry program in 2017, and in 2018 was the guest curator of the Arts Center’s group exhibition Makeshift. In 2019, Grabner began production in both the Pottery and Foundry at Kohler Co. for her artist-designed washroom, Patterns and Practicalities, installed on the first floor of the Art Preserve.

She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught for twenty years. In addition, Grabner has also had teaching appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Yale Norfolk, the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts–Bard College, Yale University School of Art, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

In 2021, Grabner was awarded the Fine Arts Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a regular contributor to Artforum, and her writing has appeared in publications including Art in America, Frieze, Modern Painters, and Art-Agenda. Grabner co-curated the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art along with Anthony Elms and Stuart Comer. She served as the inaugural artistic director of FRONT International, a triennial exhibition in Cleveland, OH, and the vicinity that ran from July through September of 2018. She is also the founder and co-director of two non-profit art spaces in Wisconsin, The Suburban and The Poor Farm, with her husband, artist Brad Killam.

Grabner has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University; INOVA, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Ulrich Museum, Wichita; and University Galleries, Illinois State University. She has been included in major group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Akron Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Walker Art Center; Tate St. Ives, UK; and Kunsthalle Bern (Switzerland). Her work is included in the permanent collection of museums including the Walker Art Center; Museum of Contemporary Art (IL); Museum of Fine Arts (MA); Dallas Museum of Art Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; MUDAM (Luxemburg); Milwaukee Art Museum; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (WI); Knoxville Museum of Art; Sheldon Museum of Art (NE); Daimler Contemporary (Berlin); Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).

Grabner is represented by James Cohan Gallery, Green Gallery, Gallery 16, Rocket Gallery, and Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie.