Known for utilizing common and manufactured materials as components for her installations and sculptures, Tara Donovan has been recognized for her commitment to process. The artist has earned acclaim for her ability to discover how the inherent physical characteristics of an object enable it to be transformed into art. She has explored the multiplication of these interactions, at times utilizing hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of units to generate powerful perceptual phenomenon and subtle atmospheric effects.

Tara Donovan (b. 1969, New York, NY) studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1987-88 before earning her B.F.A. from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C. in 1991. She received her M.F.A. in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, in 1999.

Since 1998 Tara Donovan has been the subject of 25 solo exhibitions nationwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2004), UCLA Hammer Museum (2004), Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2003-2004) and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1999-2000).  She has also participated in nearly 70 group exhibitions since 1996, including the 2000 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. 

Currently, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has organized and presented the first traveling survey exhibition of Donovan’s work.  Tara Donovan, which opened at the museum on October 10^th, will remain on view through January 4, 2009. Subsequent venues include the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, The Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, and The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California. The Monacelli Press published the first monograph of Donovan’s work to coincide with this traveling retrospective.

Tara Donovan at the Met, a show organized by Anne Strauss for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, was recently on view in The Gioconda and Joseph King Gallery from November 20, 2007­–September 21, 2008. Untitled (Mylar), 2007, designed specifically for the exhibition, covered the walls of the gallery in elegant webs of metallic Mylar loops. The show, which was extended three times, was visited by nearly 335,000 visitors.

On September 23, 2008, The New York Times announced that Donovan was a recipient of the 2008 MacArthur “genius” award.  Donovan was also the first artist to receive The Calder Prize awarded annually by the Alexander Calder Foundation in 2005. Additionally, that same year, she was granted an artist’s residency at the Atelier Calder in Saché, France. Among Donovan’s other awards and distinctions are the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Willard L. Metcalf Award (2004), National Academy Museum, Helen Foster Barnett Prize (2004), Women’s Caucus for Art, Presidential Award (2004), New York Foundation for the Arts grant recipient (2003), Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient (2003), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition (2001) and the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient (1999).

Tara Donovan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been represented by PaceWildenstein since 2005 and her second solo exhibition is planned for the spring of 2009.