Bios, longer and shorter

Nayland Blake is an artist, writer, educator and curator. Born in New York City in 1960, they attended Bard College and then California Institute of the Arts. After receiving their MFA, they moved to San Francisco in 1984. They have had one-person exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SanFrancisco, and the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. Their works are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and many others. In 2019, a retrospective of their work entitled “No Wrong Holes, Thirty Years of Nayland Blake” was organized by the ICA, Los Angeles and traveled to The List Center at MIT. They have authored numerous catalogue essays, as well as articles and interviews appearing in such publications as Artforum, Out, Interview, and Outlook. In 1995 they were co-curator, with Lawrence Rinder, of the landmark exhibition In A Different Light, at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, the first museum exhibition to examine the impact of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Queer artists on contemporary art. In 2017 they curated Tag, Propositions on Queer Play and the Way Forward at the ICA Philadelphia. From 2002 until 2020 they were the founding chair of the ICP/Bard MFA program at the International Center for Photography in New York. They are currently the chair of the studio art program at Bard college. Blake is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery in New York. For more information about Blake’s work visit: http://naylandblake.net.

Nayland Blake is an artist, writer, educator and curator. Born in New York City in 1960, they attended Bard College and then California Institute of the Arts. After receiving their MFA, they moved to San Francisco in 1984. They have had one-person exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in SanFrancisco, and the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. Their Retrospective “No Wrong Holes – 30 years of Nayland Blake opened in 2019 at the ICALA and closed in 2021 at the MIT LIst Center. They are currently the co-director of the studio art program at Bard College.

Nayland Blake photo credit: Nayland Blake