Frank Shifreen

Frank Shifreen (born February 29, 1948) is an American artist, curator, and teacher. Shifreen played a significant part in the art movement of New York City in the early 1980s, organizing massive artist-run shows that brought thousands of people to Gowanus, Brooklyn. Since then, he has organized socially conscious art exhibitions across the United States and abroad, including From the Ashes, a massive exhibition organized in the aftermath of 9/11. A neo-expressionist and social sculptor, he is a graduate of the Pratt Institute and Adelphi University, he is currently finishing a doctorate in art and art education at the Teachers College at Columbia University.

Early life Shifreen was born in New London, Connecticut on February 29, 1948. He was raised in New York City, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute in 1976.

Artistic background

Shifreen is a mixed-media artist who has worked in painting, sculpture, digital photography, live performance, landscape painting, and massive installations. His early inspiration included the work of the great abstract expressionists, such as Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, and Willem de Kooning.

Starting after he graduated in 1976, Shifreen began designing sets and props for various theater and dance companies in the United States and Europe. He began advertising his own solo exhibitions in 1976 with distinctive black-and-white posters plastered throughout New York City. He later used the same tactics to advertise the larger artist-organized events he helped found. He started teaching homebound disabled students for the New York City Department of Education in September 1996. He began attending Columbia University in 2001, and he is currently finishing a doctorate in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The Gowanus Memorial Artyard

The Monumental Show (1981) In 1979 Shifreen began to have open-studio party shows at his Gowanus, Brooklyn studio, which was a nineteenth-century munitions factory at 230 3rd Street, next to the Gowanus Canal. There many artists began to network. Because his building was over 9,500 square feet, Shifreen asked his landlord to periodically use the un-rented space. Next to the property, on Smith and 5th Street in a "Public Site", there was five acres of abandoned lot to be used as an art space.

He and artists Michael Keene and George Moore decided to plan an artshow with "monumental" art, which a group of artists began assembling. Six months before the show, Shifreen began putting out posters to call for entries, and with a $1500 grant from the Brooklyn Council on the Arts and help from Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation and Carroll Gardens Association, The show opened on May 16, 1981, and more than 4000 people visited just that first weekend to see the art and hear live music.

From the Ashes (2001) When 9/11 happened, Shifreen had been working on an art show called Witness. and saw the second plane go down, hurried to the site to volunteer, but was not allowed to help due to union rules about insurance. After the initial premiere in Detroit at MONA,

The show featured works on paper, digitally printed, painted or drawn, and had a strong multimedia component. Over 40 artists from the United States and 13 other countries displayed artwork protesting or analyzing the war in Iraq.

2008-present Shifreen was a curator and artist for the exhibition Souped-up Pontiac at the Museum of New Art in Detroit, Michigan in May and June 2008. The show contained work from international and national artists, including a live-action "painting battle" between Shifreen and Dr. Barnaby Ruhe.

Shifreen was in a show in 2008 at Harvard University called Speech Acts: Art Responding Language, Rhetoric and Politics. His steel sculptures began as the collaboration with Danny Scheffer for the Brooklyn Artlot. organized a series of exhibitions in June 2009 along with Luxembroug group "cultureinside.com", the first one entitled ROOTED - the premiere.

In September and October 2009, Shifreen co-produced the A Bailout for the Rest of Us: Recession Art Sale in Manhattan with Elanit Kayne. It featured thirty artists and thirty out-of-work professional artists. Shifreen hosted the online gallery on www.cultureinside.com.

In December 2009, he participated in the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project at the John Slade Ely House Center for Contemporary Art

On July 28, 2010, Shifreen worked with Cultureinside.com to premiere an art exhibition entitled EUtopia - Artistic Visions of Europe at the Centre Culturel de Recontre Abbaye de Neumunster in Luxembourg. The dual theme was centered on the name and the context of "poverty and social exclusion" in Europe. CultureInside first organized the show using its base of 3100 online members. 70 pieces of diverse media, including painting, photography, sculpture, digital, video, and performance, were then chosen by a curatorial committee. The works came from 13 different countries.

Guy de Muyser, President du Conseil d'Administration du CCRN, the organization that runs the Abbaye, as well as the Culture Minister of Luxembourg Octavie Modert, both spoke at the opening ceremony.

Personal life Shifreen continues to teach homebound disabled students for the New York City Department of Education.