Carolee Schneemann received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. She holds Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and the Maine College of Art. Schneemann began as a painter during the 1950s before moving to New York with her partner, the composer James Tenney, in 1960. Here, they engaged and collaborated with the growing avant-garde movement and community of artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers, from contemporaries such as Claes Oldenberg, Jim Dine and Robert Whitman to older, more established figures including Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren and Carl Ruggles. Within this experimental scene, Schneemann began to experiment with new media and forms of art-making, from performance to film, and co-founded and choreographed for the groundbreaking Judson Dance Theater. Schneemann once said that “everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.” Her work, from painting-constructions and assemblages to kinetic multimedia installations, transcends the boundaries of media and discipline.
