JARRETT EARNEST
1 January 2023 — Tacopa, CA
Jarrett Earnest is the author of What it Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics (David Zwirner Books, 2018) and Valid Until Sunset (MATTE Editions, 2023) as well as the host of Angelic Transmissions an art talk show on East Village Radio. He edited and wrote the introductions to Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings 1988-2017 by Peter Schjeldahl (Abrams, 2019); The Young and Evil: Queer Modernism in New York, 1930-1955 (David Zwirner 2020); Painting is a Supreme Fiction: Writings by Jesse Murry, 1980-1993 (Soberscove Press, 2021); Devotion: today's future becomes tomorrow archive (PUBLIC books, 2022); and Feint of Heart: Art Writings 1982-2002 by Dave Hickey (David Zwirner Books, 2024).
Earnest curated the exhibitions "Closer as Love: Polaroids 1993-2007: Breyer P-Orridge" at Nina Johnson, Miami (2019), "The Young and Evil" (2019) and "Ray Johnson: WHAT A DUMP" (2021) at David Zwirner, New York, and "The Formless Body" (2022) at Olga Korper, Toronto. With Lisa Yuskavage he co-curated "Jesse Murry: Rising" (2021-2023) (David Zwirner, New York; traveling to Contemporary Art Museum at the University of South Florida, Tampa; and Cooley Gallery at Reed College,Portland), and alongside Jack Shear and Arlene Shechet, he co-curated "Ways of Seeing: Three Takes of the Jack Shear Drawing Collection" at The Drawing Center, New York (2022).
He was faculty liaison at the free experimental art school BHQFU (2014-2017) running the MFU:NYC (fall 2016) and MFU: MIAMI (spring 2017). Earnest was Critic-in-Residence at the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (spring 2016; fall 2017; spring 2020) and the Kennedy Family Artist and Scholar in residence at the University of South Florida (fall 2022; fall 2023). In the spring of 2024 he co-taught the seminar "Fame is the Mask that Eats the Face" with Alissa Bennett and Matthew Leifheit at the Yale School of Art's graduate photography department.
Earnest has been a fellow at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (Fall 2014) and the Key West Literary Seminar (Summer 2017) residencies, a Director's Guest at Civitella Ranieri (Fall 2019), and was the inaugural critic-in-residence at the Fire Island Artist Residency (Summer 2022).
In 2012-13 he ran the collaborative exhibition space 1:1 (pronounced "one to one") with artists Leigha Mason, Alex Sloane and Whitney Vangrin at 121 Essex Street, NYC.
In 2021 Jarrett Earnest was awarded a Dorothea and Leo Rabkin prize for visual arts journalism.