Jeffrey Gibson

In his formative years, Gibson and his family moved frequently, including living abroad in Germany and Korea. The experience of growing up in diverse settings and cultures has undoubtedly lent to his distinctive artistic voice. He graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1995, and Royal College of Art (London, England) with a Master of Fine Arts in 1998, the latter of which his tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, paid for. In 2008, he was the Ronald and Susan Dubin Fellow at the School for Advanced Research, and an artist in residence at Crow’s Shadow Institute. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Smithsonian Institutions’ Contemporary Arts Grant and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. His multi-media works are contemporary abstract, interpretative enterprises with composites of Native American traditional materials such as beads and found objects that reference both his global and Native influences.