Artist
Chuck Close’s work has been the subject of more than 150 solo exhibitions including many major museum retrospectives; most recently, Chuck Close Paintings: 1968/2006, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid in 2007, which traveled to the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany and The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the subject of an earlier retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art in 1998, which concluded at the Hayward Gallery in London, and the earliest at the Whitney Museum in 1981. In 2005, a Self-Portrait retrospective was jointly organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center. A currently traveling print retrospective was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2004. Other important solo exhibitions have been held at the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Centre Georges Pompidou Paris. He has participated in almost 800 group exhibitions including Documenta 5 and 6, four Whitney Biennials, the Venice Biennial in 1993,1995, and 2002 and the Carnegie International in 1995. The recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton in 2000, the New York State Governor’s Art Award, and the Skowhegan Arts Medal, among many others, Close is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on the board of several arts organizations. He has received over twenty honorary degrees including one from Yale, his alma mater.
Photo: Chuck Close, May 1999
By: Ellen Page Wilson / PaceWildenstein, New York