Dennis H. Farber

Dennis "Denny" H. Farber (March 8, 1946 – May 8, 2017)[1][2] was an American painter, photographer and educator. Faber was the director of the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) from 2000 to 2004 and co-chair of MICA’s Foundations department from 2010 to 2011.

The Death of President Coolidge by Dennis Farber, Honolulu Museum of Art

About

He received a B.A. from Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut in 1968 and an M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California in 1975.[1]

Farber was a recipient New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in 1987. He was also awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1995, two residencies at Yaddo 2004 & 2008, Saratoga Springs, New York, and awarded a Mid Atlantic Council for the Arts Grant in 2005.[3]

Farber's photographs run the gamut from street photography to manipulated images to painted photographs many of which are abstract.[4] The majority of his photographs are large format 20” x 24” Polaroid prints. Most of his paintings are completely abstract, such as The Death of President Coolidge in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art.

Farber’s photographic work was a part of photography’s expanding boundaries in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of Farber’s pictures came from his collages of found images and re-photographed on the 20 x 24 Polaroid camera. He participated in Polaroid Corporation’s Artist Support Program. In 1992 his large format Polaroids were showcased in MoMA’s New Photography 8 exhibition.[5][6] The same year his work was one six contemporary artists’ works in The Jewish Museum’s widely traveled exhibit, Bridges and Boundaries, African Americans and American Jews. The work was also included in The Edge of Childhood, Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York, I, Diane Brown Gallery, New York, NY, The Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, which began the year before at MoMA, New York. Farber’s large format Polaroids were also included in OPEN ENDS, Innocence and Experience, Museum of Modern Art’s, (New York, New York) millennial exhibit.

Educator

He was a professor at Iolani School, Honolulu, HI 1969 – 1971, the University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1993 – 1998 and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, Maryland (1998 – 2016).

Farber was also an influential teacher, first at the Iolani School, then at both undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque) from 1993 – 1998, and the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1998-2010 in the Foundation and Painting Departments. He also directed MICA’s Mount Royal Graduate School of Art from 2000 – 2004.[7] While living in New York he taught as an adjunct at New York University (NYU). He served as an Associate Dean at both the University of New Mexico (College of Fine Art) and MICA (for the Foundation Department).

Collections
Select public museum collections
Museum Location Work Notes
Baltimore Museum of Art Baltimore, Maryland
Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn, New York Oxidized Memories (Pittsburgh, PA) (n.d.) [8]
Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Center for Creative Photography Tucson, Arizona
Columbus Museum of Art Columbus, Ohio
Corcoran Gallery of Art Washington, DC
Honolulu Museum of Art Honolulu, Ohau, Hawaii
International Center of Photography New York City, New York
Jewish Museum New York City, New York [9]
Long Beach Museum of Art Long Beach, California
Los Angeles County Museum of Art Los Angeles, California Wrapped in Stone (1986) [10]
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Houston, Texas Divided Conscience (1986-1987) [11]
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York City, New York [12]
Museum of New Mexico Santa Fe, New Mexico
Orange County Museum of Art Newport Beach, California
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography Tokyo, Japan The Party (1988), Radiant Child (1991) [13]

References
  • Heartney, Eleanor, Centric 34, Catalog; Dennis Farber, l989
  • The New Yorker, Photography Review, April 12, 1993
  • Tokyo Museum of Art, American Perspectives, Photographs from the Polaroid Collection, 2000, ISBN 447301763X
  • Village Voice, Choices, Dennis Farber, May 28, 1991
  • Village Voice, Choices, Dennis Farber, March 9, 1993

Footnotes
  1. Rasmussen, Frederick N. (2017-03-15). "Dennis H. 'Denny' Farber, artist and longtime MICA instructor, dies". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  2. "Dennis Farber | artnet". www.artnet.com. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  3. Sostek, Anya (2017-05-21). "Artist explored themes of memory and loss". Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Retrieved 29 June 2017.
  4. Harrison, Helen A. (1993-12-26). "Art: Foibles and Terrors of Contemporary Life". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-01-05. Dennis Farber's manipulations of old magazine photographs of children are not so much humorous as surreal. Often covered by drawings that give them animal attributes, the youngsters seem unaware of the bizarre mutations forced upon them.
  5. "The Museum of Modern Art Expands New Photography Series" (PDF). The Museum of Modern Art. September 1992. Retrieved 2019-01-04. On view from October 29, 1992, to January 12, 1993, NEW PHOTOGRAPHY 8....A recent series of photographs by New Jersey-based artist Dennis Farber (b. 1946) were made by altering erasing, drawing on, pasting on photographic illustrations from children's books published in the 1930s and 1940s. The pictures are most genuinely childlike in the way they blur the line that divides play and sweet fantasy from impulses that, once an adult, the child will be obliged to repress.
  6. "New Photography 8: Dieter Appelt, Ellen Brooks, Darrel Ellis, Dennis Farber, Robert Flynt, Mary Miss, Gundula Schulze and Toshio Shibata". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  7. "Dennis Farber Memorial Exhibition". Bmore Art. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  8. "Oxidized Memories (Pittsburgh, PA)". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  9. "All Artists". The Jewish Museum. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  10. "Dennis Farber". LACMA Collections. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  11. "Divided Conscience". The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  12. "Collection, Dennis Farber". The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  13. "Collection: FARBER, Dennis". Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
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