"There has always been a poetic stance in my work. Whether in focus or out, it’s never been about a single narrative, but rather something beneath the surface of what’s being photographed. And while there is a story here...that it’s fairly open-ended."
Bill Jacobson was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1955. Prior to moving to New York in 1982, he received a BA from Brown University (1977) and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (1981). He has exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum; Whitney Museum; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Victoria and Albert Museum, and many others.
Jacobson received fellowships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2017, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2012, the Aaron Siskind Foundation in 1995, and the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1994. He has had seven residencies at MacDowell Colony and also attended Yaddo, Civitella Rainieri Foundation, Bogliasco Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Edward Albee Foundation. For the past decade he has taught in the ICP/Bard MFA program.
Six monographs have been published of Jacobson's work. The most recent, 945 Madison Avenue, is a survey of the building at that address following the Whitney Museum's departure and prior to the arrival of its new tenant, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Selected Collections:
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
International Museum of Photography, George
astman House, Rochester, NY
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
New York Public Library, New York, NY
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey, NJ
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY