Wendy W. Jacob (born 1958) is a multidisciplinary artist. She is best known for works in the areas of sculpture, public art and urban intervention.
Life
Jacob was born in Rochester, New York in 1958. She received her bachelor's degree from Williams College in 1980, and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. Jacob has been a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Illinois State University, and taught at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Art career
Jacob has created installations and interventions in social spaces since 1989, and has developed a distinct body of sculptural works which investigate the interface between architecture and the bodies of the people and animals who inhabit the built environment. She is also a member of the Chicago-based collaborative Haha, whose work focuses on the exploration of social positions relative to a particular site, and which has produced over two dozen influential projects since the late 1980s.
One of Jacob's collaborations has been the creation of the Squeeze Chair, inspired by Temple Grandin's hug machine. For several years in the 1990s, Jacob has worked with Grandin in developing furniture that squeezes or 'hugs' users.
Exhibitions
Jacob has had solo exhibitions at
- the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City),
- the Madison Art Center (Madison, Wisconsin, 1999),
- the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (1998),
- MIT List Visual Arts Center,
- the Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1998), and
- the Krannert Art Museum (Champaign, Illinois) 1997)
Collections
Jacob's work resides in the collections of Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris, France; Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain (fr), Poitou-Charentre, Poitier, France; Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, France; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California; and the MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, Illinois.
Awards
Jacob received the Creative Capital Visual Arts Award in the year 2000. In 2011 she received the Maud Morgan Prize from the Boston Museum of Fine Art. In the year 2014-15 she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Glasgow School of Art.
Notes and references
- ^ "In the News - Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University". www.radcliffe.harvard.edu.
- ^ Beryl J. Wright; Robert Bruegmann; Anne Rorimer (1992). Art at the Armory: occupied territory. Museum of Contemporary Art. ISBN 978-0-933856-34-9.
- University of Chicago. Renaissance Society (1 June 1991). The Body. The Society. ISBN 9780941548236.
- Haha: Everyday Matters, University of Chicago Press, 2007.
- Nikolovska, Lira; Ackermann, Edith; Cherubini, Mauro (2008). "Exploratory Design, Augmented Furniture?". In Pierre Dillenbourg; Jeffrey Huang; Mauro Cherubini (eds.). Interactive Artifacts and Furniture Supporting Collaborative Work and Learning. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series. Vol. 10. Springer. pp. 156–157. ISBN 978-0387772349.
- "The Squeeze Chair Project". Wendy Jacob. Retrieved 7 February 2014.
- "Wendy Jacob and Jin Lee at Chicago Project Room," Art in America, 87.4 (April 1999), page 150.
- Wendy Jacob: The Squeeze Chair Project, Kemper Art Museum.
- Patti Sowalsky; Judith Swirsky (1999). On Exhibit: The Art Lover's Guide to American Museums. On Exhibit Fine Art Publications. ISBN 9780789204547.
- "The Squeeze Chair Project Wendy Jacob with Temple Grandin". MIT List Visual Arts Center. 13 January 2022.
- Krannert Art Museum (24 July 1997). Wendy Jacob (April 25-June 15, 1997). Krannert Art Museum. OCLC 794643619 – via Open WorldCat.
- "Creative Capital - Investing in Artists who Shape the Future". creative-capital.org.