Susan Rankaitis (born 1949) is an American multimedia artist working primarily in painting, photography and drawing. Rankaitis began her career in the 1970s as an abstract painter. Visiting the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

while in graduate school, she had a transformative encounter with the photograms of the artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), whose abstract works of the 1920s and 1940s she saw as "both painting and photography." Rankaitis began to develop her own experimental methods for producing abstract and conceptual artworks related both to painting and photography. Rankaitis draws on science in her work—particularly ideas generated through research in the fields of biology and neuroscience and she collaborates regularly with scientists on interdisciplinary projects.

Education

* MFA, Painting and Photography,

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, School of Fine Arts (1977) * BFA, Painting,

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University ...

, Champaign-Urbana, School of Art and Design (1971)

Solo exhibitions

* 2017: ''Light Play: Experiments in Photography, 1970 to the Present'',

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

* 2017: ''Grey Matters'', Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY * 2007:
Limbicwork
', Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY * 2005: ''Limbicwork: Pertaining to the Nature of Borders'',

Europos Parkas Europos Parkas (the "Park of Europe") is a 50-hectare open-air museum located 17 km from Vilnius, Lithuania. The museum gives an artistic significance to the geographic centre of the European continent (as determined by the French National ...

, Vilnius, Lithuania (outdoor) * 2000: ''Susan Rankaitis: Drawn from Science,'' Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA * 1998: ''Science as Art: Susan Rankaitis'', Indiana University/Purdue University Cultural Arts Gallery, Indianapolis, IN * 1997: ''Gold Science Ghost Drawings'', Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY * 1994: ''Susan Rankaitis: Abstracting Science, Nature and Technology'',

Museum of Contemporary Photography The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) was founded in 1976 by Columbia College Chicago as the successor to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography. The museum houses a permanent collection as well as the Midwest Photographers Project ...

, Chicago, IL * 1992: ''DNA Series: Susan Rankaitis'', Ruth Bloom Gallery, Santa Monica, CA * 1991: ''Susan Rankaitis: Encounters'',

Center for Creative Photography The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American pho ...

, Tucson, AZ * 1983: ''Susan Rankaitis: Inherent in Flight'',

* 1983: ''Susan Rankaitis: L'Avion, L'Avion'', International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

Academic career

Rankaitis has served since 1990 as Fletcher Jones Chair in Studio Art at

Scripps College Scripps College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Claremont, California. It was founded as a member of the Claremont Colleges in 1 ...

in Claremont, California.

Public collections

, Columbia College, Chicago, IL *

* Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University * Princeton University Art Museum *

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

* University of Maryland, Adele H. Stamp Student Union, Contemporary Art Purchasing Program * Minneapolis Institute of Arts

References

External links

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rankaitis, Susan American photographers 20th-century American painters American women artists 1949 births Living people University of Southern California alumni University of Illinois alumni Scripps College faculty 21st-century American painters