Susan Rankaitis

Susan Rankaitis (born 1949) is an American multimedia artist working primarily in painting, photography and drawing. Rankaitis began her career in the 1970s as an abstract painter.^[1][2] Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago while in graduate school, she had a transformative encounter with the photograms of the artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), whose abstract works of the 1920s and 1940s she saw as "both painting and photography."^[3][4] Rankaitis began to develop her own experimental methods for producing abstract and conceptual artworks related both to painting and photography.^[1][5]

Susan Rankaitis
Born	1949 Cambridge, Massachusetts
Education	BFA, Painting and Photography, University of Southern California, School of Fine Arts (1971), MFA Painting, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, School of Art and Design (1977)
Known for	Painting, Photography, Drawing
Movement	Abstract Photography, Conceptual Photography
Website	http://www.susanrankaitis.com/

Rankaitis draws on science in her work—particularly ideas generated through research in the fields of biology and neuroscience and she collaborates regularly with scientists on interdisciplinary projects.^[6]

Education

• MFA, Painting and Photography, University of Southern California, School of Fine Arts (1977)^[7]
• BFA, Painting, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, School of Art and Design (1971)^[7]

Solo exhibitions

• 2017: Light Play: Experiments in Photography, 1970 to the Present, Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[8]
• 2017: Grey Matters, Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY^[9]
• 2007: Limbicwork, Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY^[10]
• 2005: Limbicwork: Pertaining to the Nature of Borders, Europos Parkas, Vilnius, Lithuania (outdoor)^[10]
• 2000: Susan Rankaitis: Drawn from Science, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA^[11]
• 1998: Science as Art: Susan Rankaitis, Indiana University/Purdue University Cultural Arts Gallery, Indianapolis, IN^[10]
• 1997: Gold Science Ghost Drawings, Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY^[10]
• 1994: Susan Rankaitis: Abstracting Science, Nature and Technology, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL^[10]
• 1992: DNA Series: Susan Rankaitis, Ruth Bloom Gallery, Santa Monica, CA^[10]
• 1991: Susan Rankaitis: Encounters, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ^[10]
• 1983: Susan Rankaitis: Inherent in Flight, Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[12]
• 1983: Susan Rankaitis: L'Avion, L'Avion, International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY^[13]

Academic career

Rankaitis has served since 1990 as Fletcher Jones Chair in Studio Art at Scripps College in Claremont, California.^[14]

Public collections

• Art Institute of Chicago^[15]
• Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, IL^[16]
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[17]
• Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University^[18]
• Princeton University Art Museum^[19]
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art^[20]
• Smithsonian American Art Museum^[7]
• University of Maryland, Adele H. Stamp Student Union, Contemporary Art Purchasing Program^[21]
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts^[22]