Jennifer Cecere (born 1950,

Richmond, Indiana Richmond is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana. Bordering the state of Ohio, it is the county seat of Wayne County and is part of the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 36,812. Situ ...

) is an American artist primarily known for her role as an early member of the

Pattern and Decoration Pattern and Decoration was a United States art movement from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The movement has sometimes been referred to as "P&D" or as The New Decorativeness. The movement was championed by the gallery owner Holly Solomon. The ...

art movement in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

during the mid-1970s and early 1980s.

Early life

Jennifer Cecere was born to second-generation Italian-American parents in 1950. After growing up in Richmond,

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th ...

, Cecere moved to

Andover, Massachusetts Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was settled in 1642 and incorporated in 1646."Andover" in '' The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. An encyclopedia (American Engli ...

at the age of 14 to attend Abbot Academy, later Phillips Academy, Andover. After graduating from the Academy in 1969, she attended

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...

to study painting, earning her B.F.A in 1973.

Career

She created the first of her many large-scale installation projects, ''In My Room'', at

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the ...

in 1979. ''In My Room'', which saw Cecere transform the entirety of one of the building's former classrooms into a living room resplendent with tables, floor tiles, curtains, sofa It was a pivotal moment in the artist's career. She would go on to become a long-standing member of the Pattern and Decoration movement with exhibitions and installation projects at MoMA,

The Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has a satellite campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The school was founded in 1887 ...

Socrates Sculpture Park Socrates Sculpture Park is an outdoor museum and public park where artists can create and exhibit sculptures and multi-media installations. It is located one block from the Noguchi Museum at the intersection of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard in th ...

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum housed within the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile (New York City), Museum Mile. It is one of 19 museums that fall under the ...

, The

Addison Gallery of American Art The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. History Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...

, The

Hudson River Museum The Hudson River Museum, located in Trevor Park in Yonkers, New York, is the largest museum in Westchester County. The Yonkers Museum, founded in 1919 at City Hall, became the Hudson River Museum in 1948. While often considered an art museum by th ...

, The

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art ("The Johnson Museum") is an art museum located on the northwest corner of the Arts Quad on the main campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Its collection includes two windows from Frank Lloyd Wr ...

, and The

Burchfield Penney Art Center The Burchfield Penney Art Center, or just the Burchfield Penney, is an arts and educational institution part of Buffalo State College, located adjacent to the main campus in Buffalo, New York, United States. Dedicated to the art and vision of ...

Public art

Since creating her first public commission in 2009 at

in Long Island City, Queens, Cecere has developed site-specific sculptures for numerous institutions. These installations have included projects for The Staten Island Ferry Terminal, The New York City Department of Transportation, and Newport Beach’s Civic Center Park In 2014, Cecere was selected as the winner of a national competition to design a permanent sculpture for the brand new Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority light rail station in Cleveland, Ohio. Her sculpture, ''Chandelier'', was permanently installed in the station in 2015.

Later career

In 2019, when Pattern and Decoration saw a resurgence of scholarly attention, Cecere was one of the artists selected for the multi-country retrospective exhibition on the movement. '' Pattern, Crime & Decoration'', which traveled to

Le Consortium Le Consortium is a contemporary art center based in Dijon founded by Xavier Douroux & Franck Gautherot, among others, from the association Le Coin du Miroir (The Corner Mirror). The center was run by Douroux, in collaboration with Gautherot and Er ...

Dijon, France Dijon (, , ) (dated) * it, Digione * la, Diviō or * lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920. The earli ...

, and to

MAMCO The MAMCO () is the contemporary art museum of Geneva, which opened in 1994. The building is a former factory building, with 3000 m2 of exhibition space, it is the largest contemporary art museum of Switzerland. From 1994 to 2015, MAMCO was dire ...

Geneva, Switzerland Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...

, featured several of Cecere's 1980 works including her ''Cat Throne'' and ''Chandelier''. Cecere is currently on the Board of Directors for Studio in a School.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cecere, Jennifer 1950 births People from Richmond, Indiana Cornell University alumni American women sculptors Living people 20th-century women textile artists 20th-century textile artists 21st-century women textile artists 21st-century textile artists American furniture designers Women woodworkers 21st-century woodworkers 20th-century woodworkers American installation artists American metalsmiths Women metalsmiths 21st-century American women