Diane Samuels' work is often experienced as an unfolding: Initially, you see or sense an image but as you approach you are overwhelmed by a profusion of recognizable, detailed elements. In disengaging, you re-assemble the image with a vivid memory of the detail. Because the elements-sometimes hundreds of thousands-are typically hand-worked and often individually inscribed with the language of others, the process and the art are also an implicit commentary on the dignity of work, the importance of attention and care, and the relationship of collective knowledge and individual meaning.

Diane Samuels' solo exhibitions include the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh; the Leo Baeck Institute, the Center for Book Arts and the Kim Foster Gallery in New York; the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, the Municipal Museum of Art in Gyor, Hungary, the Synagogue Center in Trnava, Slovakia, and the Bernheimer Realschule in Buttenhausen, Germany. Group exhibitions include the Andy Warhol Museum, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech Republic.

In 1998, she was commissioned to build a memorial garden in Grafeneck, Germany, site "A" of the so-called euthanasia experiments in 1940. In 2002, she completed a six-year project working with history and current issues in Buttenhausen, Germany which culminated in performances, several pieces, and a book documenting the project (Imprints and Artifacts/Pragungen und Werkstücke).

Samuels has won two international competitions for permanent site-specific artworks: Luminous Manuscript at the Center for Jewish History in New York (completed in 2004) and Lines of Sight, a 1900-square-foot artwork that is structurally integral to a two-story glass pedestrian bridge joining two parts of the Ballinger-designed Sidney E. Frank Hall For Life Sciences buildings at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (completed in 2006). Luminous Manuscript was awarded an IFRAA/Faith & Form Award for Religious Art and Architecture in 2005 and included in Judith Dupré's 2007 (Random House) book, Monuments: America's History in Art and Memory.

Samuels was born in New York, raised in New Orleans, and attended Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, where she received both a bachelor's degree and master's degree in fine arts. She also holds a diploma from the Institute in Arts Administration at Harvard University and in 2008 was awarded a Ph.D. (h.c.) by Seton Hill University. She serves on the Board of Directors of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and is co-founder and board member of the City of Asylum Pittsburgh.

She is represented by the Kim Foster Gallery in New York.

Related Links:
Grafeneck Alphabet Garden
Buttenhausen, Germany
Judith Dupré
City of Asylum Pittsburgh
Kim Foster Gallery
Center for Jewish History
Brown University "Lines of Sight"
Intimate Immensities
In the Frame


Design: Terri Wolfe, Wolfe Design