Petah Coyne (b. 1953, Oklahoma City, OK) is a contemporary American artist who works in varied and nontraditional materials including her own specially formulated wax, taxidermy, human hair, scrap metal, silk flowers, and religious statuary. Art history, family memories, and literature often inspire her work, drawing from a large pool of different sources, from Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace to Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Her arrangement of material and juxtaposition of mediums to create large-scale installations, for which she is best known, often evoke themes of life and death, triumph and loss, chaos and stillness, and beauty and darkness.
Grounds For Sculpture will exhibit Untitled, #1383 (Sisters – Two Trees) in the Museum building, opening October 5, 2024 and on view through March 2, 2025. This work is on loan through Art Bridges Foundation and originates from the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art (PAFA), who recently exhibited this work in Rising Sun, a joint exhibition that opened in 2023 at PAFA and the African American Museum in Philadelphia. The artists participating in that project were asked to consider the question, “Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy”- a question inspired by the words of Benjamin Franklin and the lyrics from James Weldon Johnson’s Black National Anthem, Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.
Art Bridges Foundation creates and supports projects that bring outstanding works of American art out of storage and into communities. Art Bridges partners with a growing network of over 200 museums of all sizes and locations on nearly 900 projects across the nation, impacting over 5.3 million people, to provide financial and strategic support for exhibition development, loans from the Art Bridges Collection and Partner Loan Network, and programs designed to educate, inspire, and deepen engagement with local communities.
Petah Coyne attended Kent State University from 1972-1973. In 1977, she graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Her work has been the subject of more than 30 solo museum exhibitions, including Petah Coyne: Everything That Rises Must Converge, Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA (2010) and Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2005). Her work resides in numerous permanent museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA, Finland; and many others. She is the past recipient of grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, Anonymous was a Woman, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2024 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center. She is represented by Galerie Lelong & Co and NuNu Fine Art, Taiwan
Petah Coyne, Untitled #1383 (Sisters – Two Trees), 2013-2023, apple trees, taxidermied Silver Pied peacocks, aniline dye, wax, pigment, silk flowers, mixed media,168 x 245 5/8 x 278 7/8 inches, Generously lent by The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as part of Art Bridges’ Partner Loan Network, Photos: David Michael Howarth Photography
Petah Coyne’s sculpture Untitled #1383 (Sisters – Two Trees) generously lent by The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as part of Art Bridges’ Partner Loan Network. Support is provided in part by the Atlantic Foundation, funds from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a division of the NJ Department of State, and a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
