DEBORAH BRIGHT
www.deborahbright.com
risd connection: Professor, Departments of Art + Architectural History and Photography
special skill: Through her roles as an educator, critic, curator and multimedia photographer, Bright investigates art as a cultural product across many fields of experience.
breaking in: Since the early ‘80s, her essays on photography and cultural politics have appeared in the New Art Examiner, Afterimage, Michigan Quarterly Review and a variety of photography books and periodicals. Prior to joining the RISD faculty, she taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, De Paul University and the University of Massachusetts.
the road to risd: In 1989, in response to RISD’s search for people who could teach both the practice of photography and critical theory, Bright joined the faculty with a split appointment in Art History and Photography. She is the author of The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire (Routledge, 1998), and her photography is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Fogg Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Museum of American Art. She has received 16 grants and fellowships, and has published over 30 essays. Bright’s work has been shown in over 100 group and solo exhibitions, and she has been a visiting artist, critic and lecturer at numerous academic and cultural institutions.
when not teaching, she’s likely to be: … working in the studio… hanging out in Cambridge with her partner, an English and film studies instructor… reading, gardening or playing with her dog…
discoveries: “Bertholt Brecht said it best: 'Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.' ”
education
University of Chicago, MFA, 1975
Wheaton College, Illinois, BA, 1972
awards
Artist Grant, Massachusetts Cultural Council, 1999
Mellon Foundation Research Grant, The RISD Museum, 1997
Mary Ingraham Bunting Fellowship, Radcliffe College, 1995
Artist Grant, Art Matters, 1994
New Forms Grant, New England Foundation for the Arts, 1992
National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grant, 1985
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