NORM MAGNUSSON

About the Artist

I’ve received a NYFA Fellowship (2014-2015) for sculpture, Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants for sculpture (2016-2017) and for painting (1998-1999), and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council grant (2008-2009) and a NYSCA grant (through the Center for Sustainable Rural Communities – 2014), both for public art installation. In 2017, I was awarded the “Best Art in Public Places” award from the Ulster County Executive and Arts Mid-Hudson.

I’ve shown in galleries and museums in New York and New Zealand, London, Paris and all over the United States. I’m in private and museum collections around the world, including NY’s MoMA, The Museum of the City of New York, and The New-York Historical Society, and have been reviewed everywhere from the NY Times to the Washington Post to the Utne Reader, to the “Center for Sustainable Practices in the Arts” magazine, Sculpture magazine, TrendHunter.com and numerous other national and international magazines, websites and blogs.

As a curator, I’ve brought together exhibitions such as “FU”, which examined and illustrated U.S. fair use laws as they pertain to visual artists; “The Museum of Controversial Art”, which re-created some of the most controversial art through the ages; “Beautiful nonsense”, which consists of objects and art meant to challenge the intellectual sure-footedness with which we move through our everyday lives; “abc@WFG”, a survey of text-based art; and “Abstract Evocative” an exhibition of abstract art at WAAM in Woodstock.

As an educator, I’ve taught art to under-privileged kids in NYC and over-privileged kids in Woodstock, NY. I created a 12-class curriculum entitled “Art that’s changed the way I see the world around me” in which artists and gallerists and rock stars and film makers and authors and academics came and spoke on that topic with visual and audio aids. It was sooooo much fun.

For the last 8 years, on August 29, the date of its world premier in Woodstock, NY, I’ve produced an anniversary concert of John Cage’s 4’33” at the WAAM Museum in that town. =

Norm Magnusson, Glasses, 2020, archival computer prints on acid free paper, cut into strips, woven together, and mounted on acid free foam core, 44″ x 44″