Art21 is the world’s leading source to learn directly from the artists of our time. The mission of Art21 is to educate and ...

“What is the difference between art as a hobby & ‘living an artful life’?” was a question I posed recently to a class of students in one of the high school art classes I teach on the Upper West Side ...

William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1955. He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1973–76), Johannesburg Art Foundation (1976–78), and studied mime and ...

Rashid Johnson was born in 1977 in Chicago, Illinois, and lives and works in New York. Johnson, who got his start as a photographer, works across media—including video, sculpture, painting, and ...

Theaster Gates was born in Chicago in 1973. He first encountered creativity in the music of Black churches on his journey to becoming an urban planner, potter, and artist. Gates creates sculptures ...

Glenn Ligon was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1960. Ligon’s paintings and sculptures examine cultural and social identity through found sources—literature, Afrocentric coloring books, photographs—to ...

Catherine Opie was born in Sandusky, Ohio in 1961. Opie investigates the ways in which photographs both document and give voice to social phenomena in America today, registering people’s attitudes and ...

Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1961. He received a BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Bradford transforms materials scavenged from ...

Mark Dion was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1961. He received a BFA (1986) and an honorary doctorate (2003) from the University of Hartford, School of Art, Connecticut. Dion’s work examines ...

Art21’s education initiatives engage audiences in a dialogue about contemporary art and the artists featured in Art21 films. Programs are based on the organization’s belief that the art and ideas of ...

Artist Janine Antoni discusses her video piece Touch and her sculptural installation Moor. ART21: Can you tell me about your piece, Touch? Where did the idea come from for this work? ANTONI: While ...