Michelle Grabner

Grabner is represented by James Cohan Gallery in New York City; Green Gallery, Milwaukee; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Rocket Gallery, London; Upfor, Portland, Oregon; and Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel. The Indianapolis Museum of Art, MOCA Cleveland, Illinois State Galleries, and INOVA at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have each hosted survey exhibitions of Grabner’s work.

Grabner co-curated the 2014 Whitney Museum Biennial and curated the 2016 Portland Biennial. She was the Artistic Director for the inaugural exhibition, FRONT International, the 2018 Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.

Her work is in the collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; DaimlerChrysler Collection, Berlin; Musée d'art moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.The Cleveland Museum of Art had an exhibition of her work titled Michelle Grabner, "I Work From Home", November 1, 2013 - February 16, 2014.

Her reviews are regularly published in X-tra and Artforum. In 2010, Mary Jane Jacob and Grabner co-edited THE STUDIO READER, published by the University of Chicago Press. In 2018, Grabner edited An American City: Front International, a two-volume exhibition catalog published by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

With her husband Brad Killam, she founded The Suburban in Oak Park, Illinois in 1999 which hosted a range of international contemporary art. After 16 years in the Chicago vicinity, The Suburban began programming exhibitions in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood. In 2009 Grabner and Killam opened The Poor Farm in rural Waupaca County, Wisconsin. The Poor Farm is dedicated to annual historical and contemporary exhibitions, lectures, performances, publications, screenings and alternative educational programs.

Grabner received a B.F.A. (painting and drawing) in 1984 and an M.A. in art history in 1987 from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She received an M.F.A. from Northwestern University in 1990. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has been teaching since 1996. In addition, Grabner has also held teaching appointments at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Yale Norfolk, Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine.

Michelle Grabner (born 1962 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin) is an artist, writer, and curator based in Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught for twenty-three years.