Marshall Weber
B. 1960
American
marshallweberartworks.wordpress.com
Marshall Weber is an interdisciplinary artist who works in a range of media, including sculpture, artists’ books, poetry, photography, print, collage, drawing, video, and performance art. His artwork explores concepts of audience, the expansion of public space, and the decolonization of history and travel. He is also well known for his outspoken advocacy and curatorial support for activist artists, social justice organizations, and cultural diversity and equity.
Weber states his piece, Homage to Adlai Stevenson, pays tribute to the politician who served as governor of Illinois from 1949 to 1953 and was selected as the Democratic nominee to run against Dwight D. Eisenhower twice, losing both elections in 1952 and 1956. Weber’s work pays tribute to not only Stevenson but the iconic photograph by William M. Gallagher, which features Stevenson wearing well-worn shoes while campaigning in 1952. Weber states he always admired the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, as well as Stevenson’s progressive politics (at that time). To create the piece, Weber glued dollar bills on the bottom of similar shoes and walked in them for a week. As with many of his dollar bill pieces, the piece is both a memorial to Stevenson and a critique of capitalist economics.
Weber received his BFA and MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 1980s and co-founded Artists Television Access, an alternative media art center in San Francisco. He has served on the arts faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and NYU and has consulted on the curriculum for hundreds of art organizations, libraries, museums, and universities internationally. Weber currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, where he is directing curator at Booklyn, Inc., an arts organization he co-founded in 1999.
