THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION
ANNOUNCES VISUAL ARTIST
SHIMON ATTIE
APPOINTED AS STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY’S
INAUGURAL CHARLES C. BERGMAN ENDOWED
VISITING PROFESSOR OF STUDIO ART
New York, NY – September 3, 2020 – The Pollock-Krasner Foundation announced today that visual artist Shimon Attie was appointed as the inaugural Charles C. Bergman Endowed Visiting Professor of Studio Art at Stony Brook University’s College of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Attie, who began his tenure at the start of the fall semester on August 24, is a 2019-2020 Lee Krasner Award recipient and an internationally renowned artist whose practice spans mixed-media and site-specific installations for museums, galleries, and public spaces, photographs, and new media works.
Made possible by an endowment from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the visiting professorship was created in honor of the late Charles C. Bergman, who served as the Foundation’s Executive Vice President and then Chairman and CEO from the organization’s inception in 1985 until his death in 2018. The Foundation and Stony Brook University’s creation of this position celebrates Bergman’s commitment to the University and his lifelong devotion to the visual arts and artists and celebrates the legacies of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.
“Shimon Attie is a leading visual artist who has extensive experience teaching at a University level, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation is thrilled that in addition to being a recent recipient of the Foundation’s Lee Krasner Award, he has now been chosen as the inaugural Charles C. Bergman Endowed Visiting Professor of Studio Art,” said Ronald D. Spencer, Chairman and CEO of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. “This position not only honor’s Charlie’s life and work, it also advances the legacies of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, and we are grateful to Stony Brook University for partnering with us to establish this visiting professorship.”
“The Pollock-Krasner Foundation has been a staunch supporter of my work for many years, and I’m incredibly grateful to them for the resources they have provided to me and thousands of other artists over the years, allowing us to advance our practice,” said Shimon Attie. “I look forward to working with the extraordinarily talented students and staff at Stony Brook University over the course of this school year as we uphold not only Krasner and Pollock’s legacy but that of Charlie C. Bergman as well, who was at the forefront of bringing Krasner’s vision for the Pollock-Krasner Foundation to fruition.”
For more than two decades, Mr. Attie has made art that allows viewers to reflect on the relationship between place, memory, and identity. In many of his projects he engages local communities in finding new ways of representing their history, memory, and potential futures, and explores how contemporary media may be used to re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place, and identity. His work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world, including at The Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, The Miami Art Museum, and The National Gallery of Art, among many others, and his work is currently on view as part of a traveling exhibition, American Portraiture Today, organized by the National Portrait Gallery.
Chosen from a competitive pool of candidates, Mr. Attie will help to promote the continuing relevance of the life and work of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He will also collaborate with the Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center on various educational programs, including activities for Stony Brook University students.
In addition to the Charles C. Bergman Visiting Professorship, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation has a long history with Stony Brook University. The home of Krasner and Pollock in East Hampton, now known as The Pollock-Krasner House, was part of Krasner’s original bequest after her death in 1984. Following her wishes that the House be given to a charitable institution that could preserve the space as a place for the study of modern American art, the Foundation donated the House to Stony Brook University, who then built the Study Center and oversees its use today as a resource to artists and the Long Island community.
ABOUT SHIMON ATTIE
Shimon Attie is a visual artist, whose practice includes creating single and multiple-channel video works, mixed-media, and site-specific installations for museums/galleries and public places, photographs, and new media works. Mr. Attie’s projects explore how contemporary media may be used to re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place, and identity. In many works, he engages local communities in finding new ways of representing their history, memory, and potential futures. Mr. Attie is particularly concerned with issues of loss, communal trauma and the potential for regeneration, and how the histories of marginalized communities can be introduced into the physical and social landscape of the present. Mr. Attie’s received numerous awards including the Guggenheim, The Rome Prize, The Radcliffe Institute, The NEA, NYSCA, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s Lee Krasner Award, and in 2018, Mr. Attie was inducted into the National Academy of Design. Mr. Attie’s work has been exhibited/collected by numerous museums around the world, including NY MoMA, Centre Pompidou, and The National Gallery, among many others. Recent solo exhibitions include the Saint Louis Art Museum (2017) and Madison MoCA (2019). Attie’s work is currently on view in American Portraiture Today at the National Portrait Gallery. Five monographs have been published on Attie’s work, most recently Facts on the Ground (Nazraeli, 2016).
ABOUT POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION
For more than three decades, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation has supported working artists and visual arts organizations internationally. Established in 1985 through the generosity of Lee Krasner, one of the foremost abstract expressionist painters of the 20th century and widow of Jackson Pollock, the Foundation is a leader in providing resources to emerging and established artists. To date, the Foundation has awarded nearly 5,000 grants totaling $79 million in 78 countries. For more information, including guidelines for grant applications, visit the Foundation’s website: www.pkf.org.
ABOUT STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY
Stony Brook University, widely regarded as a SUNY flagship, is going far beyond the expectations of today’s public universities. With more than 26,000 students, 2,700 faculty members, nearly 200,000 alumni, an academic medical center and 18 NCAA Division I athletic programs, it is one of only four University Center campuses in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. The University embraces its mission to provide comprehensive undergraduate, graduate, and professional education of the highest quality, and has been ranked among the top 35 public universities in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Fostering a commitment to academic research and intellectual endeavors, Stony Brook’s membership in the Association of American Universities (AAU) places it among the top 65 research institutions in North America. The University’s distinguished faculty have earned esteemed awards such as the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Indianapolis Prize for animal conservation, Abel Prize, and the inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. Part of the management team of Brookhaven National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, Stony Brook is one of only eight universities that has a role in running a national laboratory. Providing economic growth for neighboring communities and the wider geographic region, the University totals an impressive $7.23 billion in increased economic output on Long Island.
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