Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham was born on November 5, 1949, in New Haven, Connecticut. He studied art and English at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, graduating in 1972, and has since built his practice in New York, where he continues to live and work. His paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures have established him as a sustained and distinctive presence in American art over four decades, with work held in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and in private collections including Sammlung Olbricht in Essen. In 2004, the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture recognized his contribution to the field with the Skowhegan Medal for Distinction in Painting.

Dunham's exhibition record reflects both the breadth of his output across media and the depth of his relationships with galleries on multiple continents. In the United States, Matthew Brown Gallery in New York serves as his primary representative, while Galerie Max Hetzler — with spaces in Berlin, Paris, and London — anchors his European presence. His history with Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich and Vienna has produced a series of focused solo presentations, among them Qualiascope Paintings and Related Drawings in 2021, MELENCOLIA in 2023, and Zeichnungen und Drucke / Drawings and Prints in Vienna in 2025. Galerie Max Hetzler has mounted parallel exhibitions across its locations, including Somatic Transmission & Qualiascope (Recent Paintings) in Paris in 2022, Works on Paper in Berlin in 2023, On Paper in Paris in 2024, and Open Studio & Empty Spaces in London in 2025. Earlier in his career, Dunham showed with Gladstone Gallery, Metro Pictures, Skarstedt, and Blum & Poe, among others.

The years 2025 through 2027 mark a period of particular institutional and critical attention. A major survey of more than fifty works spanning 1983 to the present is scheduled at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, running from December 2026 through March 2027. Accompanying a body of work completed between 2022 and 2026 — comprising twenty-four paintings, forty-six drawings, and five monotypes — the monograph Studio on Another Planet was published by Gregory R. Miller & Co. in 2026. A solo sculpture exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago is also slated for 2027, extending Dunham's engagement with three-dimensional work into new institutional contexts. A duo exhibition with Laurie Simmons at Le Consortium in Dijon in 2024 and critical writing published the following year, including an essay titled "Carroll Dunham and the territories of the repressed," further underscore the ongoing critical conversation surrounding his practice.