J. Morgan Puett

J. Morgan Puett was born in Hahira, Georgia in 1957. She received her BFA in painting and sculpture, then a MFA in sculpture and experimental filmmaking (1984), both from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Puett is a trans-disciplinary creative producer with accomplished work in the areas of installation art practices, clothing and interior design, architecture, studio arts, film and landscape; rearranging these intersections by applying conceptual tools of contemporary art.

Morgan’s early work forged new territory by intervening into the fashion system with a series of storefront installations and clothing/dwelling/event projects in Manhattan in the eighties and nineties. She continued her design work in a series of research installations around the histories of ‘the needle trade’ for museums around the world. Her interests in histories of women’s work, domesticity, new economies, design, craft, biology, environmental activism and collaboration complexly come together as social engagement through her life project, Mildred’s Lane, which continues to forge new ground citing that being is profoundly a social and political practice.

Puett has been awarded the John and Marva Warnock Award (2014), the United States Artists Simon Fellow Award (2011), the Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship (2009), the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2005), the PEI in Philadelphia (2005) amongst other grants. Recently, she has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award and a residency at The Brown Foundation Dora Marr House in Menerbes, France.

Puett exhibits and lectures extensively in venues including: MoMA, New York (2012-13); Musashimo Art University, Tokyo (2012); Contemporary Art Center, Tblisi, Republic of Georgia (2012); Creative Time, NYC (2011); Queens Museum of Art, NYC (2010); MoMA, NYC (2010); The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008); University of Venice, Italy (2005); American Fine Arts Co., NYC (2004); ARTEX, Arnheim, Netherlands (2004); WaveHill, Bronx, NYC; The Fabric Workshop and Museum of Philadelphia (2003-4); Mass MoCA, Ma. (2004); Spoleto, USA, Charleston, SC, (2002); The Serpentine Gallery & Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2001). Her work is in the Tate Modern in London, The Fabric Workshop and Museum of Philadelphia, and in the Museum of Fine art, Philadelphia.

Puett currently is living with her son, Grey Rabbit Puett, (b. 2000,) working in Pennsylvania at Mildred’s Lane and The Mildred Complex(ity) that she founded and co-directs with Mark Dion.