Tom Otterness is a prominent international artist who has created a half century of artwork in the private and public realms. His cartoon-like round and geometric sculptures, monumental and diminutive, pique the collective unconscious of fine art social satire.
 

In 2014 Will Simmons wrote “…Otterness’s work refuses the vanity of the “art object” in order to affect a more powerful, nuanced, and accessible relationship between his sculptures and his viewers. Otterness creates forms that are at once purely formal and entirely embodied, a kind of social formalism. This revolutionary act gives rise to an ethos of understated subversion, a place where we can engage with the critical function of art without the stifling pretention of normative art historical narratives.”

 

As one of the most prolific sculptors living in the US today Otterness has created over sixty private and public commissions internationally, including Germany, Holland, Qatar, South Korea, Japan, Spain, Italy, Canada, Mexico, the US and elsewhere.

 

Otterness’s works are included in major museums, foundations and cultural organizations such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York and San Francisco, the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundation in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, MONA (Museum of New and Old Art) in Tasmania, Museum Beelden aan Zee in the Hague, Netherlands, the Miyagi Museum of Art in Sendai, Japan, Frederic Meijer Sculpture Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, the Isreal Museum in Jerusalem, IVAN Centre del Carme, Valencia, Spain, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Brooklyn Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum in North Carolina, the Lannan Foundation and others.

 

Otterness was born in Kansas in the early fifties and came to New York City in 1970 to study at the Art Students League and the Tai Chi school of Grandmaster William CC Chen. In 1973 he was accepted as a Whitney Independent Study Program fellow, while working at the Museum of Natural History. He later became a member of Collaborative Projects, a pioneering community of independent artists, taking a leading role co-organizing Colab’s 1980 Times Square Show, named “the first avant-garde art show of the ‘80s” by the Village Voice. Otterness also became a member of the National Academy Museum. During this early period, Otterness started making small plaster art objects reminiscent of antiquities, which he sold on the street.

 

In 1982 through the early nineties Otterness began showing work with Brooke Alexander Gallery, including John Berggruen Gallery and James Corcoran Gallery, during which the Museum of Modern Art acquired several of his sculptures, including the large bronze Head. He joined Marlborough Gallery in 1996 until it closed in 2022. Otterness continues to work with John Berggruen Gallery and Craig Starr Gallery.

 

Since starting his art practice Otterness has also donated sculpture and artworks to non-profit art organizations, schools and parks worldwide. In 2019 Otterness donated and permanently installed more than 60 large sculptures at St. John the Divine Church in New York.

 

In 1983 Otterness exhibited “The Battle of the Sexes” plaster friezes and early bronze sculptures at Brooke Alexander Gallery in NY, in conjunction with James Corcoran Gallery and the Lannan Foundation in LA. The Frieze, seventeen reliefs, both in plaster and bronze, are installed at Craig Starr Gallery (April through October 18, 2025) in New York.

 

The complete Battle of the Sexes was installed at the former Lannan Museum, now part of Palm Beach State College, Florida, the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, North Carolina and a large version at a California Federal Courthouse. The Frieze is also installed on doorways at the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco and Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode Island, as well as private homes.

 

Judith Russi Kirshner wrote in 1990 of Otterness’ early work “His adaptations of sculptural decoration onto architecture have been influenced by diverse sources: erotic reliefs of Indian temples, Greek altars and temples, Roman columns and arches, Christian churches, Aztec pyramids – both civic and religious models, East and West….Flirting with low culture framed in high-art conventions, Otterness fulfills a 1983 desire for the pleasures of the kitsch, homogenized in a synthetic material, Polyadam, the artists’ equivalent of Tastee-Freez.”

 

The Tables, was acquired and shown by the Lannan Foundation in 1990, and donated to the Whitney Museum after touring Spain and Germany. Hayden Herrara writes of The Tables “The atmosphere is not unlike the pop mythology of Mad Max, Robo Cop and Predator films, synthetic but suggesting a brave new android world…And that It (The Tables) is couched in fantasy as wild as that of Swift, Rabelais and Lewis Carroll, or, to take a more visual parallel, as zany as Heironymous Bosch, Krazy Kat or the best of film animation.”

 

During the early nineties Michael Brenson of the NYTimes, wrote several articles, the first in 1990 “Tom Otterness’s Wicked World of Human and Beastly Folly” on the bronze work that in 1992 would become Otterness’s “The Real World” sculpture park in New York City. Brenson wrote that “His bronze sculptures at the Brooke Alexander Gallery in SoHo are like a fable about desire, curiosity and folly.”

 

Otterness has been creating large private and public bronze commissions around the world, sculpting Other Worlds with a 40-foot high work for Doha International Airport, outdoor sculpture parks at several federal US courthouses, the Museum Beelden Aan Zee’s Fairy Tales by the Sea at the Hague, Netherlands, PlayGarden Park in Fulton, Mississippi, Free Money park in Seoul, Korea, Museum of New and Old (MONA) Girls Rulebronze playground, The Real World at Battery Park, MTA’s Life Underground at 14th Street, Silver Towers in New York City, Immigrant Family in Toronto, the Kemper Museum, the Wichita Art Museum and others. Art critic Ken Johnson opined in the New York Times 2002 that “Otterness may well be “the world’s best public sculptor.” Since that time Otterness has been increasingly engaged in private commissions.

 

Otterness has created four different Playground sculpture themes, Playground, Big Girl, Girls Rule and Other Worlds, which have been installed internationally, in both public and private settings. Hilarie Sheets wrote in 2007 “All of these new works have been affected by Otterness’s integration of the computer into his design process…This first began with a giant figural play structure he built almost entirely on screen that he considers a step toward his ambitions to make anthropomorphic architectures. The ability to mentally move around inside the structure through computer animation during the conception stages opened up a new window for him.”

 

Large traveling outdoor exhibitions of his sculptures have been shown in New York on Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue Mall and Broadway Mall, downtown Indianapolis, the grounds of the Beverly Hills city hall and Avenue of the Stars, LA, Grand Rapids, Michigan at Frederic Meijer Gardens.

 

Carlo McCormick described Otterness in 2017 “It would be misleading to call him a flaneur (he has far too much of that Midwestern work ethic for such idle ramblings) but to heed Baudelaire’s description of this condition ‘…to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the intimate. To be away from home and yet to feel everywhere at home…’ is to marvel at the discrete yet engaged place Otterness’ art occupies in our world.”

 

 

SELECTED SOLO AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025    Tom Otterness:  Battle of the Sexes, Craig Starr Gallery 73rd Street, New York, NY

2022     Tom Otterness, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2019    Tom Otterness: Sculpture and Drawing 1996-2017, Marlborough Gallery 57th Street, New York, NY

2017    Tom Otterness: Tipping Point, Marlborough Gallery 57th Street, New York, NY

2015    Tom Otterness: Metal on Paper, Marlborough Gallery 57th Street, New York, NY

2014    Tom Otterness: Creation Myth, Marlborough Gallery 57th Street, New York, NY

2012    Tom Otterness, Marlborough Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco

            Tom Otterness, The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, Palm Beach, Florida

2011    Tom Otterness: Animal Spirits, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

2007    Tom Otterness: The Public Unconscious, Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York

2006    Tom Otterness in Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills, California

            Tom Otterness, Marlborough Monaco, Monte Carlo, Monaco

            Tom Otterness in Grand Rapids: The Gardens to the Grand, Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan

2005    Tom Otterness on Broadway, New York, New York

            Tom Otterness in Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana

2004    Several Strange Objects, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California

2003    Free Money on Park Avenue, Park Avenue and 57th Street, New York, New York

            Bombeater, Skoto Gallery, New York, New York

2002    Tom Otterness: Free Money and Other Fairy Tales, Marlborough Gallery & Marlborough Chelsea, New York, New York          

            See No Evil, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

            What the Hay, Utica, Montana

            Tom Otterness, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbour, New York

1999    Tom Otterness, Galería Marlborough, Madrid, Spain

            Tom Otterness: Gold Rush—New Sculpture and Drawings, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California

1998    Tom Otterness: The Marriage of Real Estate and Money and Other Recent Projects, PBCC Museum of Contemporary Art, Lake Worth, Florida

1997    Otterness, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

            Life Underground, Battery Park City Authority, New York, New York (through 1998)

1996    Tom Otterness: Marriage of Real Estate and Money, Motel Fine Arts, New York, New York

1995    Tom Otterness, On the Commons: Recent Sculptures, MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, New York

            Tom Otterness: The Tables, Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas

            Tom Otterness: Drawings and New Sculpture, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, New York

            Tom Otterness: Recent Sculpture, Public Art Fund at Doris Freedman Plaza, New York, New York

1994    Tom Otterness: Recent Drawings and Small Objects, Gallery of Contemporary Art, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

1993    Galerie Weber, Münster, Germany

            Tom Otterness: New Sculpture, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California

            Tom Otterness: The Tables, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1992    Tom Otterness, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, New York

1991    Tom Otterness: The Tables, Sculptures and Drawings, Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain; traveled to Portikus/Senckenbergmuseum, 

            Frankfurt, Germany; and Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, The Netherlands

            Tom Otterness, Nancy Drysdale Gallery, Washington, D.C.1

1990    James Corcoran Gallery, Santa Monica, California; traveled to Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, New York

            The Tables, Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles, California

1987    The Tables, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, New York

            Projects: Tom Otterness, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

            Sculpture and Drawings, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California

1986    Tom Otterness, PPG Plaza, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1985    Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, New York

1984    Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne, Germany

1983    Tom Otterness, Recent Drawings, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, New York

 

COMMISSIONS

Arts Council of Indianapolis, Indianapolis, Indiana

Beelden Aan Zee Museum, The Hague, The Netherlands

Eli Broad Family Foundation, Santa Monica, California

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware

Gateway Foundation, St. Louis, Missouri

Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey

Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Center Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain

IVAM Center Julio Gonzales, Valencia, Spain

Kemper Art Museum, Kansas City, Missouri

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York

Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida

Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico

Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York

Palm Beach Community College Museum of Art, Lake Worth, Florida

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California

The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, New York

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

The Miyagi Museum of Art, Sendai, Japan

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York

Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, North Carolina

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

 

 

COMMISSIONS  

2019    Tai Chi, Hanyangman Park, Wuhan, China

2014    Other Worlds, Hamad International Airport, Doha, Qatar

2013    Creation Myth, Memorial Art Gallery Centennial Sculpture Park, Rochester, New York

2011    Big Girl Playground, Ridgehill, Yonkers, New York

2010    Otterness’s Playground, Silver Towers, New York, New York

            Free Money, Wi City Blooming, Ilsan, Korea

            Centennial Sculpture Park, Rochester, New York (commissioned by Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester)

            Wild Life, Connell, Washington

            Another World, Happy Hallow Park & Zoo, San Jose, California

            Play Garden Park, Fulton, Mississippi

2008    Millipede, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas

            Large Covered Wagon, DUMBO Brooklyn, New York (through January 2009)

            Social Invertebrates: Millipede, Scorpion, Walking Stick, Phoenix Convention Center, City of Phoenix, Office of Art and Culture, Phoenix, Arizona

            New Direction, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, New Jersey

2007    Coqui, P.S. 20, New York, New York

            Matriculated Nature, City of Claremont, California

            DNA, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida

            Immigrant Family, 18 Yonge Street, Toronto, Canada

2005    Amorphophallus Titanum, New York Botanical Gardens, Bronx, New York

            Humpty Dumpty, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, New York, New York

            Large Frog and Bee, Montefiore Children’s Hospital, Bronx, New York

            Large Covered Wagon, Pioneer Park, Walla Walla, Washington

2004    Life Underground, 14th Street Subway Station ACEL Lines, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York, New York

            El Coqui Gigante de Las Cavernas del Río Camuy, Parque de Los Cavernas del Río Camuy, Camuy, Puerto Rico

            Untitled, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Museum Foundation, Scheveningen, The Netherlands

            Tornado of Ideas and Horse and Rider, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

2003    The Return of the Four-Leggeds, Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Washington State Arts commission, Spokane, Washington

2002    Mortellito Memmorial, Branchbrook Park Station, New Jersey Transit, Newark, New Jersey

            Makin’ Hay, Utica, Montana; Sun Valley, Idaho; traveled to The University of Washington, Pullman, Washington; The Outdoor Art Collection, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; 

            and San Antonio, Texas (acquired by the Alturas Foundation; through 2009)

2001    Suspended Mind, Carl Sagan Discovery Center, Montefiore Children’s Hospital, in collaboration with Rockwell Group, Bronx, New York

            The Lesson, Little Red School House, New York, New York

            Independence School, P.S.234, New York, New York

2000    Time and Money, Public Art Fund, Hilton Times Square, Hilton Hotel Corporation, New York, New York

1999    Gold Rush, United States Federal Courthouse, General Services Administration, Sacramento, California

            The Music Lesson, Music Building, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina Arts Council, Greensboro, North Carolina

            Feats of Strength, Western Washington University, funded in partnership with Washington State Arts Commission, Art in Public Places Program, Bellingham, Washington

            Rockman, United States Federal Courthouse Minneapolis, General Services Administration, Minneapolis, Minnesota

1998    The Gates, Cleveland Public Library, in collaboration with Maya Lin, Cleveland, Ohio         

1997    Law of Nature, United States Federal Courthouse Portland, General Services Administration, Portland, Oregon 

            Visionary, Metro Tech Center, Brooklyn, New York

1996    The Marriage of Real Estate and Money, Roosevelt Island, New York, New York

1995    Dreamers Awake, Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas

1994    Upside-Down Feet, Krannert Museum of Art, Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

1993    Upside-Down Feet, Krannert Museum of Art, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois

            Die Überfrau, State Library, Munster, Germany; Architect: Bolles-Wilson

1992    The Real World, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City Authority, New York, New York

1991    The Frieze, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, North Carolina

            The New World, The Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, General Services Administration, Los Angeles Federal Building, Los Angeles, California

1984    Kings Parade, Buchhandlung Walther Koenig, Cologne, Germany

 

Whitney Museum

 

 

Craig Starr catalogue