Deborah Roberts
Born: Austin, Texas, 1962
Lives and works in Austin, Texas
Education
2014 MFA, Syracuse University Research Fellow, Syracuse, New York
1985 BFA, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
Awards and Prizes
2023
Texas Medal of Arts Award Honoree for the Visual Arts
2019
Finalist, The Outwin: American Portraiture Today 2019, organized by Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC
2018
Anonymous Was a Woman, New York
2017
Artist of the Year, Austin, Texas
2016
Grantee, Pollock Krasner Foundation, Grantee
2014
Best in Show, Syracuse University MFA Exhibition
2011–2014
Syracuse University Graduate Research Fellow, Syracuse, New York
2008
Artist of the Year, Austin Texas
2010
San Francisco African American Legacy Scholarship
1991
President Point of Light Recipient, President George H. Bush
Projects and Public Artworks
2022
From Near and Far: Collage and Figuration in the Contemporary Age, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England (exhibition curator)
2021
Let Freedom Ring Vol. 2, Lafayette and Flatbush Avenues, New York (digital billboard)
2020
Little man, little man, Jones Center, The Contemporary Austin, Austin, Texas (outdoor mural)
Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions
2023
What about us?, Stephen Friedman Gallery, New York
Come walk in my shoes, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico
Deborah Roberts and Niki de Saint Phalle: The Conversation Continues, Galerie Mitterrand, Paris, France (two-person)
2022
True Believers: Benny Andrews and Deborah Roberts, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas (two-person, catalogue)
I have something to tell you, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England
I’m, Art + Practice, in collaboration with the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, California; Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, Florida (touring, catalogue)
2021
A look inside, Bluecoat, Liverpool, England
O’ Say Can’t You See, Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, California
I’m, The Contemporary Austin, Austin, Texas; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Colorado (touring, catalogue)
2019
If they come, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England (catalogue)
Native Sons: Many Thousands Gone, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles
2018
Fragile but Fixable, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
Uninterrupted, Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, California
Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi, Spelman Museum, Atlanta, Georgia (catalogue)
2017
Ingenue, Fort Gansevoort Gallery, New York
Nobody’s Darling: New Works by Deborah Roberts, Christian-Green Gallery, Austin, Texas
2016
Coil, Coarse, Twist, Re-twist, Art Palace, Houston, Texas
2014
One and Many, Art Palace, Houston, Texas
Domestic Disturbance, Diverse Art Gallery, Austin, Texas
Consensual Marks, SDCC, Dallas, Texas
2013
When We Just Existed, Community Folk Art Center, Syracuse, New York
2011
Resistance Begins at Home: Rethinking Otherness, Dallas, Texas
2008
Forks and Spoons, South Dallas Culture Center, Dallas, Texas
2006
Bearing Witness, Stone Metal Press, San Antonio, Texas
Reconstructing, Rethinking, Reacting, O’Kane Gallery, Houston, Texas
2004
Chicago Culture Center (South Shore) Chicago, Illinois
Center for African & African American Studies, Austin, Texas
Group Exhibitions
2024
The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (touring)
Get in the Game, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
Irrationally Speaking: Collage & Assemblage in Contemporary Art, Ruby City, San Antonio, Texas
THIS IS TOMORROW, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
The Whole World Smiles with You, Opera Gallery, London, England
When You See Me: Visibility in Contemporary Art/ History, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
One History, Two Versions, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas; Phillips Collection, Washington DC (touring, catalogue)
Century: 100 Years of Black Art at MAM, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey
Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, Brooklyn Museum, New York
A Superlative Palette: Black Women Contemporary Artists, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African
American Arts + Culture, Levine Center for the Arts, Charlotte, North Carolina
2023
Dawn of Humanity: Art in Periods of Upheaval, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany
The Place I Am, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England
Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee (touring, catalogue)
Pop Stars! Popular Culture and Contemporary Art, 21c Museum Hotel Kansas City, Missouri
2022
To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Massachusetts
I Can’t Breathe, Brainlab Headquarters, Munich, Germany
Tiny Traces: Black and Asian children at London’s Foundling Hospital, Founding Museum, London, England
Rock My Soul Stockholm, Karlaplan 14, Stockholm, Sweden
Still Writing the Story of Art, Victoria Miro, London, England
A Picture Gallery of the Soul, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Park, Washington DC
Women Painting Women, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas
From Near and Far: Collage and Figuration in the Contemporary Age, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England
Picturing Black Girlhood: Moments of Possibility, Express Newark, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey
The Future is Female, 21c, Nashville, Tennessee (touring)
2021
New Arrivals: From Salvador Dali to Jenny Saville, National Galleries Scotland, Scotland
The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), Richmond, Virginia (catalogue)
The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri; Alaska State Museum, Juneau, Alaska (touring)
2020
100 Drawings from Now, The Drawing Center, New York
25 Years, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England (catalogue)
Artists for New York, Hauser & Wirth, New York
True Likeness, Van Every/ Smith Galleries, Davidson College, North Carolina
2020, Gladstone Gallery, New York
Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida
The Future is Female, 21c, Durham, North Carolina (touring)
2019
Re/Devaluing Colorism: Intersections of Skin Color and Currency at Southwest School of Art, Texas
The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC (touring)
Pop Stars! Popular Culture and Contemporary Art, 21c Lexington, Lexington, Kentucky
Still I Rise, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts
Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland (catalogue)
Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers, Somerset House, London, England (catalogue)
Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary, Californian African American Museum, Los Angeles, California
2018
Talisman In The Age Of Difference, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England
In the Eye of the Beholder, Tarble Art Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, South Carolina
Go Figure, Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio
Soul Recordings, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
Legacy of the Cool: A Tribute to Barkley L. Hendricks, Mass Art, Boston, Massachusetts
Constructing Identity in America (1766-2017), Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey
The Future is Female, 21c, Bentonville, Arkansas (touring)
2017
Fictions, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (catalogue)
March Madness, Fort Gansevoort, New York
The Future is Female, 21c, Cincinnati, Ohio (touring)
2016
I know why the caged bird sings, Carver Museum, Austin, Texas
The Future is Female, 21c, Louisville, Kentucky (touring)
2015
Gently Fried, Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, Austin, Texas
The House on Mango Street, National Mexican American Museum, Chicago, Illinois
2014
The Way Out – MFA, Rogue Space, New York
2013
Gender Is A Kind of Doing, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, San Francisco, California
2011
Viewing Program, The Drawing Center, New York
Mirame: 21st century portraits for Latino/a America, Sacramento, California
2009
Women of Color, Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland, California
Her Stories, Park School, Baltimore, Maryland
2007
Taking Possession, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Arkansas
Counter Intuitive, Chicago State University, Chicago, Illinois
2006
Uncle Tom to Peeping Tom, University of Milwaukee UGA, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Boundless, Perceptions from Within, DAC, Austin, Texas
2005
Museum of Science and Industry, Juried Exhibition, Chicago, Illinois
Woman Made Gallery, Juried Exhibition, Chicago, Illinois
Subjective Visions, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas
Figure It Out, Art Palace Austin, Texas
2004
Susan Woodson Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
Unmasked: A Collective Statement on Beauty, Butridge Gallery, Austin, Texas
2003
Bird, Juried Exhibition, Concordia University, Austin, Texas
Our Heritage–Creating New Legacies, Juried Exhibition, Butridge Gallery, Austin, Texas
Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Juried Exhibition, Austin, Texas
2002
Center for African American Studies, University of Texas, Austin, Texas
Publications
2023
Deborah Roberts: Twenty Years of Art/Work, Radius Books
Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee
Vitamin C +, Collage in Contemporary Art, London, UK
2022
True Believers: Benny Andrews and Deborah Roberts, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas
2021
The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), Richmond, Virginia
Deborah Roberts, I’m, The Contemporary Austin, Texas, USA
2020
25 Years, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England
Deborah Roberts and Questions of Power, Collecting Black Studies. University of Texas Press, Ringle, Hallie
2019
Cut and Paste 400 Years of Collage, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, Elliot, Patrick, Dr. Freya Gowrley, and Yuval Etgar
Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers, Somerset House, London, England, p. 127
Deborah Roberts, If they come, essay by Daniella Rose King, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, England
Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi, edited by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, PhD, Spelman Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
2018
Fictions, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York
Residencies
2019
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Florida
2018
The Fountainhead, Florida
Public Collections
American Friends at British Museum, London, UK
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Block Museum of Art, Evanston, Illinois
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Burger Collection, Hong Kong
Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, New York
He Art Museum, Guangdong, China
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts
Legacy Museum, Montgomery, Alabama
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, Florida
Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio
Ruby City, San Antonio, Texas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
Scottish National Galleries, Edinburgh, UK
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
21c Museum Hotels, Louisville, Kentucky