“The bedroom is a complete environment of mass-produced objects marketed towards girls and women…all the stuff ‘girls’ ‘need’.“
— PORTIA MUNSON
Overview
Bio
Credits
Through her prescient drawings, paintings and signature maximalist installations, Portia Munson (b. 1961) centers the many, and often conflicting, expectations we put on the production and consumption of the female body.These ideas are showcased through her playful selection and presentation of objects including bulbous breasts, humorous crotch clenching nutcrackers, innocent dolls, sexy lingerie, and suggestive vessels. Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom is the first presentation of Munson’s work at The Museum of Sex and features a new sculpture titled Nude II (2022) and a site-specific iteration of the Pink Project: Bedroom (1994 – ongoing) that skirts the line between empowerment and entrapment. By confronting us with the many plastic things we acquire, revere or discard, Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom makes space for a pleasure that is complex and subjective.
Portia Munson (b.1961) lives and works in Catskill, NY. She holds a BFA from Cooper Union, an MFA from Rutgers University, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been awarded residencies at institutions including Civitella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy; MacDowell Colony for the Arts, Peterborough, NH; Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. Munson was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2019. Her work has been the subject of over twenty solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA; and Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY, among others. Munson’s work has also been included in numerous international group exhibitions including, Still, Life! Mourning,Meaning, Mending, 21c Louisville, Louisville, KY; Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church, and our Contemporary Moment, Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY; Dime-Store Alchemy, curated by Jonathan Rider, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Beyond Boundaries: Feminine Forms, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Objectophilia; Biennial of the Americasof the Americas, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; and Bad Girls, curated by Marcia Tucker, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY, among others. Her public works include Pink Projects with the Art Production Fund, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY; Art in the Terminal, the Albany International Airport, Albany, NY; MTA Arts for Transit, Bryant Park MTA Station, New York, NY; and a permanent Metropolitan Transit Authority installation in Brooklyn, NY. In summer 2022, Munson presented three solo exhibitions, Bound Angel, P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Portia Munson: Flood, Art Omi, Ghent, NY; and Memento Mori, Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY. Her work will be included in the upcoming exhibition Rituals of Devotion at the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
CURATOR
Emily Shoyer, Curator at Large
CURATORIAL ASSISTANCE
Laura Metzler, Exhibitions and Curatorial Manager Kayla Janaé Smith, Curatorial Project Assistant
ARTIST ASSISTANT
Maeve McCool
EXHIBITION DESIGN
Eunice Yunjeong Lee
EXHIBITION PRODUCTION
Cletis Chatterton
TECHNOLOGY TEAM
Winston Forgenie Jr. Edgar Samudio
INSTALLATION & CONSTRUCTION TEAM
Bernard Gann Flores Painting Jewel Webb Sara Sciabbarrasi Matt Soranno Freeda Electra Handelsman Zur Handelsman
SCENT DESIGN
Marissa Zappas
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photo by JSP Art Photography. Courtesy of Portia Munson; the FLAG Art Foundation; and P·P·O·W, New York
