Renée Stout
Renée Stout (b. 1958, Junction City, KS) lives and works in Washington, D.C. A mixed media artist, Stout draws inspiration from current social and political events, the African Diaspora, daily city life, and the spiritual realm. Stout’s objects and paintings often emerge from her decades long research into art history and Hoodoo spiritual traditions that have arisen from African roots through American slavery to the present. Hoodoo practices are vibrant and very extant in parts of the American Southeast and Caribbean.
Stout’s sculptures, like Device for Stopping the Evil Eye, and Elixir Eleven, are small sculptures created by hand. These fabricated machine-like objects are meant to connect us to the spiritual realm and otherworldly powers. They more broadly represent the hopes and desires that faiths and religions around the globe seek to fill. Universal desires for health, love, survival, and happiness.
Stout’s work has recently been included in the critically acclaimed exhibitions Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art exhibition (Toledo Museum, Speed Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2012-2022),The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse (Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, 2022) and Rising Sun: Artist in an Uncertain America at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2023.
Her work is in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Nasher Museum of Art, The High Museum in Atlanta, The Hirshhorn Museum, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Saint Louis Museum of Art, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and many more.
Stout grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, and holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2020 she was awarded The Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award, and The Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award (2nd Place), and in 2018 the Women’s Caucus for Art, Lifetime Achievement award. She is a recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award, the Joan Mitchell Painter and Sculptor’s Grant Award, and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award among others.
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Escape Plan D (with Hi John Root, Connecting the Dots), 2022
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Navigating the Abyss, 2022
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Ikenga (If You Come for the Queen, You Better Not Miss), 2022
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Agent 213, 2022
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Come Back Gil (Scott-Heron) #3, 2021
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Sketchbook, with Longing (Come Back Gil Scott-Heron), 2021
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Botanical Illustration #1, 2019
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Lotus Root, 2018
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Spirit Detector, 2014
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Wall, with List, 2014
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Blueprint, 2013
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Armored Heart/Caged Heart, 2005
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Stereo Sights and Sounds
June 11 - July 30, 2023 Lower East Side -
Renée Stout
Navigating the Abyss January 8 - March 5, 2023 -
Contaminated Landscape
June 16 - August 12, 2022 -
Renée Stout
Part II October 21 - November 13, 2021 Lower East Side -
Renée Stout
Part I September 8 - October 15, 2021 -
The Pattern of Patience
June 17 - July 24, 2021 Lower East Side
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Renée Stout Acquired by The Whitney Museum
November 5, 2024 -
Renée Stout in Smithsonian Design Triennial
August 6, 2024 -
Stereo Sights and Sounds in Hyperallergic
July 12, 2023 -
Renée Stout in Frieze
February 21, 2023 -
Renée Stout in The New York Times
February 3, 2023 -
Renée Stout at Minneapolis Institute of Art
February 1, 2022 -
Renée Stout in The Brooklyn Rail
November 11, 2021 -
Renée Stout in Hyperallergic
November 10, 2021 -
Renée Stout at Speed Art Museum
October 22, 2021 -
Renée Stout in The New York Times
July 17, 2021 -
Renée Stout at Phillips Collection
July 9, 2021