Myra Greene: Kept

PATRON is proud to announce the opening of Kept, Myra Greene’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. In her latest body of work, Greene extends her ongoing interest in portraiture by exploring the ways in which context and material enlivens the object.  

For Kept, Greene mined a group of family and personal photographs belonging to her grandmother. Greene selected and reprinted a group of photo booth images from the collection using alternative materials and techniques she developed based on historic processes. Her artistic practice acts as an intervention upon each image, leading the viewer to reevaluate the photograph’s value and meaning as memory objects. For Greene, this work comprises a rich, living archive that allows a reconsideration and evaluation of the historical context of mid-twentieth century vernacular imagery of Black American life.

MYRA GREENE (b. 1975, New York City, NY) lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She received an MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM and a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO. 

Select solo and group exhibitions include Reimagining Likeness and Landscape (2022), Penumbra Foundation, New York, NY; Silver Linings (2022), Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Myra Greene: Spectrum (2021), The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY; South Arts 2021 (2021), 701 Center for Contemporary Art, Columbia, SC, Travels to: Harvey B. Gantt Center of African American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC, City Gallery at Waterfront Park, Charleston, SC, and University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL; Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts: Thinking about History with The Block’s Collection (2021), The Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL; TONE (2020) Indianapolis Contemporary, Indianapolis, IN; Complementary (2020), Corvi-Mora, London, UK; Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Selections from the Rose Collection, 1933 - 2018 (2020), The Rose Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Collective Identity A Selection of Photographic Portraits from the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (2019), Paris Photo, Paris, FR; INTERVAL (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia, Atlanta, GA; Go Down Moses (2019), Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago IL ; I Sing the Body (2019), Transformer Station, Cleveland, OH; Minor Chord (2019), PATRON, Chicago IL; Glimmers Through Dark Matter (2019), PATRON Projects New York, New York, NY; and Undertones (2018), Corvi-Mora, London, UK.

Her work is included in the public collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; The Rose Museum, Waltham, MA; J.P. Morgan Chase, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA; New York Public Library, New York, NY and several others.