Tom Otterness, American (1952 - )

Tom Otterness (b. 1952 in Wichita, Kansas) is an American sculptor whose works adorn parks in New York---

most notably in Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City and in the 14th Street/8th Avenue subway station---and other cities around the world. His style is very cartoonish and cheerful, and the forms of his sculptures often consist of many blobs and pipes, giving them a humorous look. These sculptures depict, among other things, huge pennies, pudgy characters in business suits with moneybag heads, helmeted workers holding giant tools, and crocodiles crawling out from under sewer covers. The main theme of his work seems to be the struggle of the little man against the Capitalist machine in a difficult and strange city.

As primarily a public artist, Otterness' has shown popular exhibitions in locations across the United States, including New York City, Indianapolis, and Beverly Hills. His studio is located in the DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn.

His most recent exhibition of public sculpture in Grand Rapids, Michigan is his largest to date, featuring more than 40 works across two miles of the city's downtown area and at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

Otterness is best known to New Yorkers for his "Life Underground" series of sculptures, which are primarily located in the 14th St/8th Avenue subway station, which was commissioned in 2000 and fully installed by 2002.

Journalist Gary Indiana criticized Otterness for an independent work done while part of the East Village art scene in the mid-eighties called "Shot Dog Piece", in which Otterness allegedly "adopted a dog and then shot it to death for the fun of recording his infantile, sadistic depravity on film." When student Matthew Goad, a candidate for student government president at Wichita State University, learned of this act, Wichita State began questioning a USD$450,000 commission, which would cost an additional USD$150,000 for shipping, however, at present it looks as if the project continued may as planned. Otterness commented that "In 1977, I was a young artist having a very rough time. I had anger at myself and at the world. What I did was symbolic of how I was feeling internally and it is something I would never do today.

1952	Born in Wichita, Kansas
1970	Art Students League, New York
1973	Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1977	Member of Collaborative Projects, Inc., New York

2004	Untitled, Museum Beelden aan Zee, Scheveningen, The Netherlands Tornado of Ideas, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas
2003	The Return of the Four-Leggeds, Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Washington State Arts Commission, Spokane, WA; to be installed in 2003
2002	Life Underground, Metropolitan Transit Authority and Arts for Transit, 14th Street and 8th Avenue, New York, NY; to be installed 2002
2002	Untitled, Branchbrook Park Station, New Jersey Transit, Newark, NJ
2001	Suspended Mind, Carl Sagan Discovery Center, Montefiore Children's Hospital, Bronx, NY
2000	Time and Money, Hilton Hotel at Times Square, Forest City Ratner Corporation, NYC
1999	Rockman, Federal Courthouse, General Services Administration, Minneapolis, MN Kohn Pedersen Fox (Architect), Martha Schwartz (Landscape Architect) Feats of Strength, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA The Music Lesson, Music School, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC Calloway Johnson Moore & West (Architect) Gold Rush, Federal Courthouse, General Services Administration, Sacramento, CA Nacht & Lewis/Hansen Lind Meyer (Architects)
1998	The Gates, Cleveland Public Library, in collaboration with Maya Lin (Artist) and Tan Lin (Poet) Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates (Architect)
1997	Visionary, Metro Tech Center, Brooklyn, NY Law of Nature, The Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse, General Services Administration, Portland, OR Kohn Pedersen Fox (Architect)
1996	The Marriage of Real Estate and Money, Roosevelt Island, NY
1995	Dreamers Awake, Wichita Art Museum, Kansas Untitled, Eli Broad Family Foundation, Santa Monica, California
1993	Upside-Down Feet, Krannert Museum of Art, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaigne Die Überfrau, State Library, Münster, Germany, Bolles-Wilson (Architect)
1992	The Real World, The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Park Battery Park City Authority, NY Carr Lynch Associates (Environmental Design)
1991	The New World, The Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, General Services Administration, Los Angeles Ellerbe Beckett Associates (Architect)

2004	Puerto Rico, Las Cavernas del Rio de Camuy
2005	New York Botanical Garden

The Brooklyn Museum, New York

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Dallas Museum of Art, Texas

Guggenheim Museum, New York

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

IVAM Center Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

2003	BOMBEATER, Skoto Gallery, New York
2002	See No Evil, Marlborough Gallery, New York Free Money and Other Fairy Tales, Marlborough Gallery, New York, (catalogue) Free Money and Other Fairy Tales, Marlborough Gallery Chelsea, New York, (catalogue)
1999	Marlborough Gallery, Madrid, Spain (catalogue) John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco (catalogue)
1998	Palm Beach Community College Museum of Art, Lake Worth, Florida
1997	Marlborough Gallery, New York (catalogue) Life Underground, Battery Park City Authority, New York
1996	Motel Fine Arts, New York
1995	Recent Sculpture, Doris Freedman Plaza, New York; a project of the Public Art Fund On the Commons, Recent Sculpture, at Metro Tech Center, Brooklyn; a project of the Public Art Fund The Tables, Wichita Art Museum, Kansas Brooke Alexander, New York
1994	Recent Drawings and Small Objects, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL (catalogue with interview)
1993	Galerie Weber, Münster John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco The Tables, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
1992	Brooke Alexander, New York
1991	The Tables, Sculptures and Drawings, IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia. Traveled to Portikus/Senckenbergmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (essay by Judith Russi Kirshner) Nancy Drysdale Gallery, Washington, DC
1990	James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica and Brooke Alexander, New York (essay by Hayden Herrera) The Tables, Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles
1987	Projects, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (essay by Linda Shearer) John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1986	Tom Otterness, PPG Plaza, Pittsburgh (essay by Vicky A. Clark)
1985	Brooke Alexander, New York

2004	PublicArt in the Bronx, Lehman College Art Gallery The City University of New York, Bronx Empire: Views from a New World Order, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
2003	Amazing Animal Exposition, 2003 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards, ISC New Jersey State Fair Grounds for Sculpture Ameri©an Dre@m: A Survey, Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York Polarities, Durst Organisation, New York Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, American Academy of Arts and Letters
2001	Sculpture, Drawing and Works on Relief, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA Lighten Up: Art with a Sense of Humor, De Cordova Museum Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
2000	Drawings and Photographs, Mathew Marks Gallery, organized by the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, New York Imaginary Beings, Exit Art, New York DNCArt, a project for the Democratic National Committee, New York Monte-Carlo International Sculpture Festival: Contemporary American Sculpture, Marlborough Gallery, Monte-Carlo, Monaco
1998	An Exhibition for Children, 242, New York
1997	American Art in the Age of Technology, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA Contemporary Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition, Woodson Art Museum, Wasau, WI
1996	Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House, Exhibition IV, Washington, D.C. A Century of American Drawing from the Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
1994	Eleventh Biennial Benefit, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Jahresmuseum 1994, Kunsthaus Murzzuschlag, Switzerland
1993	Art, Money & Myth, Palm Beach Community College Museum of Art, J. Patrick Lannan Gallery, Lake Worth, FL The Elusive Object: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, Stamford, CT Branch
1992	Allegories of Modernism, Museum of Modern Art, New York Body, Leg, Heads and Special Parts, Westfaelischer Kunstverein, Munich (essay by Lucy Lippard)
1991	No Laughing Matter, October 1991 - April 1993, a traveling exhibition organized by Independent Curators International, New York. Curated by Nina Felshin Rope, Galeria Fernando Alcolea, Barcelona Couleurs de l'argent (The Color of Money), Musée de la Poste, Paris About Round Round About, Anders Tornberg Gallery, Lund, Sweden
1989	Object of Thought, Anders Tornberg Gallery, Lund, Sweden
1988	Aperto 88, XLIII Esposizione La Biennale di Venezia New Sculpture/Six Artists, The Saint Louis Art Museum Democracy: Education, Group Material at Dia Art Foundation, New York
1987	The Re-emergent Figure: Seven Sculptors at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY
1986	New Trends in Contemporary Sculpture, 10 New Outstanding Sculptors of America and Japan, Sapporo Art Park, Tokyo Spectrum: The Generic Figure, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC
1985	Working in Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, New York Nouvelle Biennale de Paris XIIIe, La Villette, Paris 1985 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York The Classic Tradition In Recent Painting and Sculpture, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
1985	Working in Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, New York Nouvelle Biennale de Paris XIIIe, La Villette, Paris 1985 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York The Classic Tradition In Recent Painting and Sculpture, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT