Meg Cranston
Organizing Principles
November 9 – December 14, 2024
Meg Cranston (b. 1960) received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts and her BA from Kenyon College. She has received awards such as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, J. Paul Getty Community Foundation Artist Grant, Architectural Foundation of American Art in Public Places Award, and a COLA Artist Grant and is currently the Chair of Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles.
Cranston has been exhibiting internationally since 1988. Early exhibitions include curator Paul Schimmel’s seminal 1992 exhibition Helter Skelter at the MOCA / Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the 1993 Biennale di Venezia / Venice Biennale. She co-curated the influential exhibition 100 Artists See God with John Baldessari. Solo exhibitions include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Artspace, Auckland and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. More recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at the Kunstverien Heilbronn, Germany in 2015 and LA><Art, Los Angeles in 2013, as well as, the group exhibitions The Afghan Carpet Project at the Hammer Museum curated by Ali Subotnick, Made in LA 2012, also at the Hammer Museum and Hans Ulrich Olbrist’s ongoing Do It project.
Recently, her work has been included in the exhibitions Los Angeles - A Fiction curated by Gunnar B. Kvaran, Thierry Raspail (MAC Lyon) and Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth at the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (touring to MAC / Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France), L' image volée curated by Thomas Demand at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, L.A. Exuberance - New Gifts by Artists at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art / LACMA and Class Reunion at the MUMOK / Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna. In 2018, she co-curated the exhibition This Brush for Hire: Norm Laich and Many Other Artists with John Baldessari at the Institute of Contemporary Art / ICA, Los Angeles.
Among her publications, Cranston is the co-editor of the JPR | Ringier books More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About John Baldessari volumes 1 and 2 with Olbrist. A monograph on her work Hot Pants in a Cold, Cold World also published by JRP | Ringier is available.
Cranston’s work can be found in major collections worldwide including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art / LACMA, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, as well as important foundations such as the Colección Jumex, Mexico City and the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles.
