Titus Kaphar was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He obtained his Bachelor in Fine Arts in 2001 at San Jose State University and in 2006 his Master's at Yale University, School of Art.
Kaphar's artworks interact with the history of art by appropriating its styles and mediums. He cuts, bends, sculpts and mixes the work of Classic and Renaissance painters, creating formal games and new tales between fiction and quotation. He is fascinated by history: art history, American history, world history, individual history – how history is written, recorded, distorted, exploited, reimagined, and understood.
Past exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. His work is included in the collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. In 2014, TIME magazine commissioned Kaphar to create an artwork in response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri.
Kaphar lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.
SELECTED ONE-ARTIST EXHIBITIONS
2018
- Unseen: Our past in a new light, The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, March 2018 – 2019
2017
- Impressions of liberty, installation at Princeton University Maclean House, Princeton, NJ, November – December 2016
2016
- Shifting Skies, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, Decembre 2016 - January 28, 2017
2015
- Titus Kaphar: Drawing the Blinds and Asphalt and Chalk, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, January 15 – February 21, 2015
- 99 Jeromes, ArtSpace, New Haven, Connecticut, July 17 – September 12, 2015
- Titus Kaphar: Selections from Asphalt and Chalk, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, June 10 – August 31, 2015
2014-2017
- The Vesper Project, Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 17 – September 13, 2014. Travelling to: New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, November 2014–February 2015; American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center, Washington, D.C., November 7 – December 13, 2015; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Fall 2015–Spring 2016
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2018
- Parallel lives, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, June 1-August 18, 2018
- On whiteness, the Racial Imaginary Institute at The Kitchen, New York, NY, June 27-August 3, 2018
- From enslavement to mass incarceration, permanent exhibition, the Legacy Museum, Montgomery, AL, 20
2017
- 20/20: The Studio Museum in Harlem and Carnegie Museum of Art, Heinz Galleries, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, July 22 – December 31, 2017
- Examining Political Expressions in African American Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan, July 23 – October 22, 2017
- The Legacy of Lynching: Confronting Racial Terror in America, Brooklyn Museum, New York, July 26 – September 3, 2017
2016
- For Freedoms, Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street, New York, NY, June 30 – July 29, 2016
- Arresting Patterns: Perspectives on Race, Criminal Justice, Artistic Expression, and Community, African American Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 30 – September 11, 2016
- Recharging the Image: Selections from the Mott-Warsh Collection, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, New Jersey, April 4 – July 10, 2016
- Dress Up, Speak Up: Costume and Confrontation, 21c Museum Hotel, Durham, North Carolina, September 2016 – July 2017
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
- Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama
- Brooklyn Museum, New York
- The Burger Collection, Zurich, Switzerland
- Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
- The Equal Justice Initiative Museum, Montgomery, Alabama
- Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, Michigan
- New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut
- Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, Florida
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
- The Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio
- Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle, Washington
- Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York
- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
- The Legacy Museum, Montgomery, AL
AWARDS
- 2018 Art for Justice, Imagining Justice Grantee
- 2018 The Rappaport Prize
- 2018 MacArthur Fellow
- 2017 The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant
- 2016 Artist as Activist Fellow: Racial Justice + Mass Incarceration, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
- 2015 Creative Capital Fellow
- 2009 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Fellowship Recipient, Seattle Art Museum
- 2006 Artist in Residence, The Studio Museum In Harlem
- 2004 Belle Arts Foundation Grantee
- 2001 California Arts Council Grantee
