Agnes Denes is an American artist/scholar of international renown. One of the originators of Conceptual art, Denes has investigated the physical and social sciences, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, art history, poetry and music and transformed her explorations into unique works of visual art. Denes is also a pioneer of environmental art, dealing with ecological, cultural and social issues in her work which is often monumental in scale.
Perhaps best know for Wheatfield -- A Confrontation (1982), a two-acre wheat field she planted and harvested in downtown Manhattan, a work that addresses human values and misplaced priorities. In 1996 she completed Tree Mountain -- A Living Time Capsule in Finland, a massive earthwork and reclamation project that reaches four hundred years into the future to benefit future generations with a meaningful legacy.
In 1998 she planted a forest of endangered species in Australia and a cropland in the heart of Caracas, Venezuela. Agnes Denes has had over 325 solo and group exhibitions on four continents, including Documenta VI in Kassel (1977), three Venice Biennales (1978, 1980, 2001) and "Master of Drawing" Invitational at the Kunsthalle in Nurnberg (1982). She has shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 1992 she had a major retrospective at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, for which five art historians contributed catalogue essays. An artist of enormous vision, Denes has written four books and holds a doctorate in fine arts.
Among her numerous awards are the Rome Prize for the American Academy in Rome (1997-98); the Eugene McDermott Achievement Award from M.I.T. "In Recognition of Major Contribution to the Arts" (1990); the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award (1985); four National Endowment Fellowships and four NYSCA grants; and the DAAD Fellowship from Berlin. Denes is a Research Fellow at the Studio For Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University; the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T. and the Courant Institute at N.Y.U. She lectures extensively at universities in the U.S. and abroad and has participated in global conferences in Moscow, Oxford, Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto, etc.
Selected public collections include: Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; National Museum of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art; and Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.; Kunsthalle, Nurnberg,; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, and many others.