Underdone Potato:
Michelle Grabner
Opening Reception
Join us for the opening reception on Thursday, April 17 from 5 to 7 pm.
From SMA Executive Director Scott Malbaurn
We are pleased to present the solo exhibition “Underdone Potato: Michelle Grabner.” An artist, arts educator, critic, and curator, Grabner (b. 1962, Oshkosh, WI) is an important facilitator in today’s contemporary artworld who not only makes meaningful works of art, but has also created new art spaces, curated important exhibitions, and championed many artists. Grabner pushes boundaries of traditional fine art mediums along with compositional structures where you’ll find systems of repetition and patterns. Process is an integral part of her art.
Grabner is an artist who defies conventions, poking against the norms of the clichéd ivory tower within the artworld by grounding her work in the everyday and valuing the labor that goes into making art. In her curatorial projects, she discusses the regions outside the artworld’s metropolitan centers such as New York and Los Angeles as locales that should not be overlooked. As an educator, Grabner has shared apprehension about young artists making sacrifices in order to find a place in the artworld. These nurturing thoughts can be found in the work that Grabner makes and the work she does within the artworld. For instance, in founding The Suburban with her husband and artist Brad Killam on their suburban property in Oak Park, IL, she offered engagement opportunities for their neighborhood by bringing in artists from around the US and abroad. The Suburban started as a small cinderblock structure at eight feet by eight feet square and is testament to the power of creating community and culture with what can be initially thought of as a drop in the bucket compared with the artworld as a whole. This may sound simple enough, but it indeed takes work, time, thought, and commitment. The Suburban became a national sensation and well respected in the art community and thought of as a “cool” place to show if you had the opportunity. It inspired many others to do the same in their respective regions. Today, The Suburban can be found in Milwaukee, WI.
Grabner’s comprehensive approach to the artworld and community was noted by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, as she was invited to co-curate the 2014 Whitney Biennial with Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art, and Anthony Elms, Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Two years later, here in Oregon, Grabner was sole curator of the Portland Biennial. For this endeavor, Grabner transcended expectations and made the effort to make it an Oregon biennial, conducting over a hundred studio visits around the state and included thirteen cities for biennial exhibitions. It was an exciting time for the Oregon arts ecology.
Michelle Grabner received her MA in Art History and BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and an MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University. She is currently the Crown Family Professor of Art and the Senior Chair of the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has taught since 1996. She has also held teaching appointments at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; Cranbrook Academy of Art; Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts—Bard College; Yale University School of Art; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. She is a regular contributor to Artforum, and her writing has also appeared in Art in America, Frieze, Modern Painters, and Art-Agenda. In 2018, Grabner served as the inaugural artistic director of FRONT International, a triennial exhibition in Cleveland and vicinity. In addition to The Suburban, she is founder and co-director of The Poor Farm, with her husband, artist Brad Killam. Grabner is the spring 2025 Visiting Artist and Scholar in Teaching (VAST) resident at Southern Oregon University (SOU), a program sponsored by the Schneider Museum of Art (SMA) and operated by the SMA and SOU’s Creative Arts program.
Beyond this museum solo exhibition, Grabner has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University; INOVA, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Ulrich Museum, Wichita; and University Galleries, Illinois State University. In 2021, The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI commissioned Grabner to create an artist-built environment for their new Art Preserve building. She has been included in major group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Akron Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate St. Ives, UK; and Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland. Her work is included in the permanent collections of museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Dallas Museum of Art; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Indianapolis Museum of Art; MUDAM, Luxemburg; Milwaukee Art Museum; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI; Knoxville Museum of Art, TN; Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Grabner lives and works in Milwaukee.
I would like to thank Michelle Grabner for making her artworks available; Patrick Collier for contributing the engaging interview; Sue Taylor for her wonderful essay contextualizing the work; Maureen Williams, our museum Preparator and Gallery manager; Emily McPeck, our Associate Director of Administration and Communication; our student staff; members of our Museum Council—Cindy Barnard, Roberta Bhasin, Sandy Friend, Michele Fulkerson, Mary Gardiner, and Vivian Stubblefield; and School of Arts and Communication Dean, Andrew Gay. Grateful acknowledgment as well for our catalog design by David Ruppe and printing by Brown Printing in Portland, OR.
