Eileen Neff

Eileen Neff

Fellow: Awarded 2016
Field of Study: Photography

Competition: US & Canada

Having formally studied literature (B.A. Temple University) and painting (B.F.A. Philadelphia College of Art; M.F.A. Tyler School of Art), Eileen Neff has been working with photo-based images and installations since 1981. Drawing on both historic and contemporary concepts of picturing the natural and constructed world, her work also includes an investigation of studio practice itself as a generative source. From the start, Neff’s projects have developed in relation to the sites where she exhibits, embracing presentation considerations as another critical layer of inquiry.

Her most recent solo exhibitions were at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia and Bruce Silverstein in New York City. In 2007, the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia) exhibited a 15-year retrospective of her work, which in 2009 traveled to the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Ireland. The same year, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina presented a 10-year retrospective of Neff’s work. Other individual installations include the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia; the Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery, Pittsburgh; Artists Space, New York City; and P.S. 1, Long Island City.

Neff has been the recipient of several awards, including the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, and the Leeway Foundation Artist Grant. She has been awarded residencies at Monte Azul Center for the Arts, Talamanca Mountains, Costa Rica; MacDowell Art Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; and La Napoule Art Foundation, La Napoule, France. Most recently, she has been invited to be an Artist in Residence at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, Kentucky.

Eileen Neff is a Resident Critic in the MFA Program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and an Adjunct Professor at the University of the Arts. From 1989 to 2002, Neff wrote reviews for Artforum, and continues to write independently.

Her work is currently represented by Bridgette Mayer Gallery and Bruce Silverstein.

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