Betty Beaumont facts for kids

Betty Beaumont (born January 8, 1946) is a Canadian-American artist. She creates art that is often made for a specific place (called site-specific art) and art that explores ideas (called conceptual art). She is also a sculptor and photographer.

Betty Beaumont is known around the world for her art. She often mixes different types of art and ideas. Her work looks at environmental, social, economic, political, and architectural topics. Betty Beaumont lives and works in New York City.

Her art makes people think about big global issues. It also makes them think about how we live and how we treat our planet. Beaumont often looks for ways to make things more sustainable. She connects these ideas to history, culture, and current events.

One of her most famous artworks is Ocean Landmark (1978-1980). This was a huge project placed underwater. It used 17,000 special blocks made from coal waste. These blocks were placed three miles off Fire Island National Seashore. They created a new home for sea creatures on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Early Life and Education

Betty Beaumont was born in Toronto, Canada. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was young. She went to California State University, Northridge. She earned her first degree there in 1969.

Later, she got her master's degree in 1972 from the University of California, Berkeley. After that, she moved to Chicago and then to New York City in 1973. She still lives in New York today.

In 1976, Betty Beaumont built a film set for the famous artist Andy Warhol. She also worked with filmmaker Barbara Kopple. She even danced with Twyla Tharp at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

What is Art to Betty Beaumont?

Betty Beaumont believes that art is very important for shaping the world. She says art "asks questions" and "makes us imagine new things." It also "presents new ways of thinking." She feels her art moves from specific, technical details to more abstract and thoughtful ideas.

Her work often questions different ways of seeing the world. It tries to make people more aware of these views. She does this by looking at how humans use language, images, and objects.

Many of her projects are like big collections of work themselves. She keeps coming back to modern questions. She expands her ideas using new tools and technologies.

Early Works (1969–1980)

When Betty Beaumont was a student at Berkeley, she took photos of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. This series was called Steam Cleaning The Santa Barbara Shores… Her pictures showed how the oil spill damaged the coast. They also showed how people tried to clean it using powerful steam hoses.

She later paired these photos with a work from 2001. It was called Timeline of Global Oil Spills 1960-2004. This piece showed a list of major oil spills around the world.

Her earliest art was made during a time when the women's art movement was growing in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Beaumont spent time living in the desert with the Hopi Native Americans. This experience made her explore how society interacts with nature. In the early 1970s, she started creating art for specific outdoor places. These artworks aimed to help people reconnect with their environment.

In 1977, Beaumont made Cable Piece. She created a huge iron ring using 4,000 feet of cable. The ring was 100 feet wide. It was left on a farm in Macomb, Illinois, to slowly sink into the ground. Over time, the rust from the ring changed the soil. This made the metal ring turn into a circle of lush green grass.

Her 1977 work Found Words collected small pieces of writing. These fragments came from unknown people and their activities. She photographed them for nine months. Then she started collecting them in her studio. This led to 116 handmade paper artworks. She also worked with Hiroaki Sato to translate the fragments. The project was shown in Japan. It ended with a special box set of paper works and a book.

In 1978, Beaumont created photos called Love Canal USA. The Hooker Chemical Company had dumped waste at Love Canal for many years. This waste polluted the soil and water in the nearby neighborhood. It caused many health problems for the people living there. Her photos showed empty, boarded-up houses around Love Canal. They explored what "home" means to people who lost theirs. They also showed how pollution and company neglect tried to hide this history.

These large-scale artworks led to her big project, Ocean Landmark (1978–80). This project also dealt with ideas of fixing things and looking to the future. It was an art and science project that reused waste. It created a home for fish and helped local fishing. It also showed a new way for industries to be more eco-friendly.

The Ocean Landmark Project (1978–1980)

Betty Beaumont's Ocean Landmark was a huge project. It cost $3 million and had many supporters. These included the US Department of Energy and the Smithsonian Institution.

She worked with scientists and engineers. They were trying to find ways to make coal waste safe in water. Beaumont suggested turning this waste into an underwater sculpture. This sculpture would act like an artificial reef. It would create a place where people could fish. The waste material was made safe and placed 70 feet under the Atlantic Ocean. It grew into a beautiful underwater garden.

Even though you can't see the sculpture, you can experience it. Beaumont and others created a virtual reality (VRML) version in 2000.

Ocean Landmark is even listed on the NOAA map as a "fish haven." It has been written about in many art and science publications.

Works from 1984 to Today

In the years after Ocean Landmark, Beaumont created other important works. These included Windows on Multinationals (1984–87), Toxic Imaging (1987), and El Otro Sendero (1988). These large projects used different types of media. They explored how pollution affects health. They also looked at social problems, corruption, and how media can be misleading.

In 1989, Beaumont started a project that grew for two decades. It was called A Night in Alexandria...The Rainforest...Whose Histories Are They Anyway? This artwork was a powerful warning about loss.

Beaumont made a list of over 150 important books to her. She collected copies of these books. Then, she treated, burned, and arranged them on tall shelves. The burning books were a metaphor for the loss of knowledge. This included the loss of species in the rainforest and the ancient knowledge from the Library of Alexandria. Both were huge sources of information that were lost.

For the first anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Prague, Beaumont created Voices (Whose What Which) (1990). It was placed at the Stalinov Pomnik. The opening was attended by Vaclav Havel, a famous Czech leader. This art piece invited people to think about where public language comes from.

Beaumont helped start a group called REPOhistory. With other artists, she worked on the medical part of the Choice Histories (1992) art show.

In 2004, Beaumont created Camouflaged Cell Concealment Sites. This was a series of color photographs. They showed cell towers hidden to look like everyday things. These included palm trees, water towers, and cacti. She photographed them in places like Azusa, California and Phoenix, Arizona. She wanted to show how companies try to make things look "green" (called greenwashing) in nature.

In 2006, Beaumont made Boxed In/Boxed Out: The Mobile Studio Project. This art show commented on how Manhattan was changing. Artists were being forced out, and old buildings were torn down for new condos. The show was held near the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2008, Beaumont had a show called Who Will Our Children Sing Songs About in 100 Years? It was in Kutztown, PA. The show had four sculptures made of children's chairs. They were shaped like a line, a circle, a triangle, and a rectangle. The colors of the chairs matched the flags of countries with big population changes. Children's XO laptops showed world clock counters.

A related work, Way (2009), used 21 different ways to say "Way." These were paired with "WHOSE, WHAT, WHICH" in Swahili, Hindi, Chinese, and English. They were written on 500 tear-off sheets on a wall. As each sheet is torn off, the artwork changes. It makes people think about their beliefs and actions. The pile of torn sheets shows how many people participated.

During the Great Recession in 2008, Beaumont started a sculpture project. It looked at buying habits and how we build our identity. Untitled (Crushed) has over a hundred unique works. These are crushed shopping bags that Beaumont collected. She shows them as broken symbols of beauty and brand identity.

Another related work is Prêt-à-Porter. This piece also looks at how society creates identity. It has a collection of international shopping bags. These bags are hung on a clothes rack with tags. The tags name the person who gave the bag. The bags act as stand-ins for clothes and identity. Each name tag labels a person with a specific brand identity.

In June 2012, the entire Alexandria... series was shown for the first time. It was at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. This new library was built where the ancient one used to be. It was a perfect place for the show. The series included a new work called Global Lost Libraries (2012). This showed photos of books Beaumont had burned. People also read from books from lost libraries around the world.

Her experience in Egypt during the 2012 election inspired her. She saw demonstrations at Cairo's Tahrir Square. This led her to create Arab Voices in 2012. Four words—Whose, What, Which, and My—were translated into Arabic. They were placed on four walls. The artwork explored how people connect and share ideas in public spaces. Arab Voices built on her past works that invite people to participate.

Studio Papers Redux – It Makes My Head Spin & My Heart Sing (2013) was a personal series. It celebrated Beaumont's forty years of working in her New York City studio. She shredded and changed her old studio papers. These included research, descriptions, and notes. She combined them with musical instruments. Beaumont said a dream inspired the installation. In the dream, her belongings were on fire but not destroyed. She saw it as a "surrealist image of energy."

In early 2016, an exhibition showed ideas for a project about language attrition. This means when languages are lost. These ideas included wooden sound columns made from old organ pipes. They would play songs in endangered languages. This project shows Beaumont's continued interest in the loss of human knowledge and cultures.

Exhibitions

Before she got her master's degree in 1972, Betty Beaumont's art was shown in New York City and London.

Since 1972, her art has been in many solo and group shows around the world. Her art has been displayed in many galleries and museums in New York City.

Her A Night in Alexandria... art was shown at MoMA PS1 in 1989.

An art piece from the Ocean Landmark series started her connection with Damon Brandt Gallery in 1990. Other artworks inspired by this project were shown worldwide. These included the Queens Museum, New York, and the Hudson River Museum, New York.

In 1994, Beaumont began showing her work with Colin de Land at American Fine Arts Gallery. The John Gibson Gallery started representing her in 2002. They placed her artworks in important collections in Europe and the United States.

In 2002, the Puffin Foundation and others helped her create a large photo work. It was called Steam Cleaning the Santa Barbara Shore –the Worst Oil Spill in U.S. History + Time Line of Global Oil Spills 1960 –2004. This work was shown at the National Library José Martí in Havana, Cuba.

In the Netherlands, Museum Het Domein showed her video art, 5 Works. Her performance images from her 1989 work Riverwalk were shown in New York City in 2004.

In 2015, some of Beaumont's photos were shown in an exhibition. These photos were of WAC participants. They were taken during the 1992 March for Women's Lives in Washington, DC.

Her group exhibitions include shows at the National Museum of Modern Art, Japan (1977, 1978). She also showed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2001), and the Museo Tamayo, Mexico (2001).

Her solo exhibitions include shows at Galleri Stenström, Sweden (1978), and the Richard Demarco Gallery, Scotland (1984). She also had shows at the Stalinuv Pomnik, Prague (1990), and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt (2012).

Her art is part of collections in many museums. These include the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It is also in the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

Awards and Honors

Betty Beaumont has received many awards and grants. She has won six National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. She also received four New York State Council for the Arts grants. She has three Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants as well. Other awards include a Creative Capital Grant (2000) and a Puffin Foundation Grant (2002).

Beaumont has served on important boards. These include the Art & Technology Program at the New York Hall of Science. She was also on the Board of Directors of Women Make Movies. She is one of the artists in the video Totalitarian Zone (1991). She is also listed in the Women Environmental Artists Directory.

She often speaks at conferences about environmental art and group projects. Her work has been reviewed in many magazines and newspapers. These include The New York Times and The Village Voice.

Teaching

Betty Beaumont taught sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1972 to 1973. She also taught at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976. From 1985 to 1990, she was an assistant professor at State University of New York at Purchase. Students there gave her a Professor of the Year Award.

She taught in the MFA program at Hunter College from 1989 to 1993. She was also a faculty member at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study from 1998 to 2001. In 2001, she was a visiting instructor at Columbia University. In 2006, she received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley.

Art Research Collaboration

Beaumont started a non-profit group called Art Research Collaboration (ARC). This group helps create large art and environmental projects that might not happen otherwise. ARC's projects are varied. But they all look at how new technologies can help people and nature. ARC believes the environment includes personal, political, social, spiritual, physical, cultural, and economic aspects.

Two of ARC's projects are A Night in Alexandria… The Rain Rainforest… Whose Histories Are They Anyway? and Ocean Landmark. ARC is currently working on a project about losing languages and bringing them back.

Further Reading

• Betty Beaumont; Marilu Knode; Rochdale Art Gallery (Rochdale, England). Betty Beaumont : Changing Landscapes : Art in an Expanded Field : 26 August-23 September 1989 (Rochdale, Lancashire, England : Rochdale Art Gallery, 1989) (Worldcat link: [1]) OCLC 79731156
• Barbara C Matilsky; Queens Museum of Art. Fragile Ecologies : Contemporary Artists' Interpretations and Solutions (New York : Rizzoli International, 1992) (Worldcat link: [2]) ISBN: 0-8478-1592-7; ISBN: 978-0-8478-1592-0