Barbara T. Smith (American b. 1931)

Barbara T. Smith was born in Pasadena July 6, 1931.  She studied art and comparative religions at Pomona College ’53 and got her MFA in ’71 from UC Irvine.  As a founder of performance art, her early pieces took place in homes, on streets & beaches. She has been represented in historic surveyexhibitions including “Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandanavia?” at Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway (09); “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” (traveling exhibition 08’- 09’); “LA to Paris – 1955 – 1985” at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (06’); and “Out of Actions Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979” at MOCA Los Angeles (98’).

The artist was recently included in several major exhibitions as part of Pacific Standard Time series organized by the Getty throughout 2011-2012 including the solo exhibition, “The Radicalization of a 50’s Housewife”, at UC Irvine and group exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art, UC Berkeley Museum; MOCA Los Angeles; 18th Street Art Gallery; Laguna Art Museum; and Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Smith has had recent solo exhibitions at The Box Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Galerie Parisa Kind, Frankfurt, Germany; and Maccarone Gallery, New York, NY. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as the Los Angeles Times; New York Times; Frieze; Art in America; Artforum; Flash Art; Spike; High Performance; Der Lowe; Die Lowen; Avalanche; among others.

The artist is represented by The Box Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.