Dennis Farber

Dennis Farber (1946-2017) was an American painter, photographer, and teacher. Born on March 8, 1946 in Pittsburgh, PA, he received a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, CT in 1968 and an MFA from The Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA in 1975. He died in Baltimore, MD on May 8, 2017.

In a 40-year career Farber’s work covers a broad range, from abstract paintings to manipulated images to large format 20” x 24” Polaroid prints to Inkjet painted photographs. His pieces are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Jewish Museum in New York, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and numerous others.

Farber’s photographic work was part of photography’s expanding boundaries in the 1970’s and 80’s. He participated in Polaroid Corporation’s Artist Support Program, utilizing pictures from his collages of found images and re-photographing them on the 20 x 24 Polaroid camera. In 1992 his large format Polaroids were showcased in MoMA’s “New Photography 8” exhibit. That same year his work was one of six contemporary artists’ works in The Jewish Museum’s widely traveled exhibit, “Bridges and Boundaries, African Americans and American Jews.” In 2000 the work appeared in “OPEN ENDS, Innocence and Experience,” The Museum of Modern Art’s millennial exhibit.

In 1987 Farber was a recipient New York Foundation for the Arts Grant. He was also awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1995 and a Mid-Atlantic Council for the Arts Grant in 2005.

Farber was also an influential teacher, at both undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (1993-1998), and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (1998-2016). He also directed MICA’s Mount Royal Graduate School of Art, 2000-2004.