Dana Clancy

Dana Clancy is an artist, and Director and associate professor of art at Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts where she has also taught in the Painting area since 2000. Professor Clancy is represented by Alpha Gallery, Boston and has had solo exhibitions there and at the Danforth Museum of Art, the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Babson College, Laconia Gallery, Harvard University Medical School, Boston University, and other venues. She has been included in group exhibitions nationally and internationally in Florence and Como, Italy.

Dana Clancy works from and with museums as a source for her work and her teaching. Her area of research is the relationship of the artist and the public to the contemporary art institution, which also helps inform her leadership as Director of School of Visual Arts (since 2018). As a professional artist, she expresses her research through painting, drawing, exhibiting, and lecturing nationally. Since 2007, Clancy has painted and drawn from contemporary museum renovations and buildings from MoMA to Maxxi in Rome and worked from modernist icons such as the Guggenheim Museum and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye. She uses the traditional materials of painting to explore contemporary architecture and site-based artwork informed by contemporary perspectives on the legacy of modernism.

Professor Clancy says “It’s all about looking at looking and considering the role of the museum to frame experience and points of view. The museum is a public space that encourages social debate and private reflection. I am interested in the way museums frame that public/private experience. I embed my own reflection in much of my work to indicate my subjective presence and perspective.” She is especially interested in the museum as a space of shared cultural expression and social debate, including conversations around the importance of decolonizing the museum and the importance of art institutions to support artists who are leading social change. She says “I teach my BU seminars and classes in front of works of art or assign students to use museums as a source as much as possible. I want students to experience the power of complex material art objects first hand.”

Publications/Creative Works

Dana’s work has been published in the book 100 Boston Painters and included in several editions of New American Paintings Northeast Edition as well as being consistently reviewed in The Boston Globe.

During the COVID-19 pandemic time of social upheaval, Clancy’s work shifted toward documenting conversations with artists over Zoom, painting words and images from these digital interactions onto pages of the Sunday edition of The New York Times. This work is also centered around public and private reflections about the social role of the arts.

Awards

Dana has been the recipient of a St. Botolph Club Foundation Award, a grant from the Artists Resource Trust, a Clowes Award residency to the Vermont Studio Center, a Tinkertank residency at Threewalls gallery in Chicago, and a residency at Camac Centre d’Art in France with support from a grant from the Fondation Tenot.