Michael Singer

About

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Michael Singer's work opened new possibilities for outdoor and indoor sculpture and contributed to the definition of site-specific art and the development of public places. From the 1990s to the present his work has been instrumental in transforming public art, architecture, landscape, and planning projects into successful models for urban and ecological renewal. His site-specific works foster new growth and life, retain and cleanse water, create areas to witness natural systems, and are respectful of site, culture and history. The New York Times chose Singer's design of a massive waste recycling and transfer station in Phoenix, Arizona as one of the top eight design events of its year. In 2007 he co-authored 'Infrastructure and Community: How Can We Live With What Sustains Us' for Environmental Defense. He was awarded a Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE) commission for an entry garden sculpture at the American Embassy in Athens, Greece (opened 2008).

Singer has been involved in landscape, outdoor environment, planning, and infrastructure projects across the United States and Europe, among them the one-acre sculptural garden commemorating “Those Who Survived” in a new public park in Stuttgart, Germany, and the vertical “Welcoming Garden” in the Samuel Priest Rose Building in Manhattan.

His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His works are held in public collections including the Australian National Gallery, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He had several one-person shows, most notably at the Guggenheim Museum, New York City. He has taught graduate-level architecture at MIT, the School of Visual Arts, and the Rhode Island School of Design, and held the Koopman Visiting Chair of Art at Hartford College of Art and the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida Atlantic University, where he also served as Special Consultant to the Dean of Arts and Humanities.