For over thirty years Catherine Wagner has been observing the built environment as a metaphor for how we construct our cultural identities. She’s examined various institutions as art museums and science labs, the home, and Disneyland. Wagner’s process involves the investigation of what art critic David Bonetti describes as “the systems people create, our love of order, our ambition to shape the world, the value we place on knowledge, and the tokens we display to express ourselves.”

Wagner has spent her life working both in California and as an active international artist in photography, installation, and site-specific public art, lecturing extensively at museums and universities. She has received many major awards, including the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant (2025), ArtBae Award (2025), Rome Prize (2013-14), Artadia Award (2007), Guggenheim Fellowship (1987), and two fellowships through the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2001, Wagner was named one of Time Magazine’s Fine Arts Innovators of the Year. Her work is represented in major collections around the world, such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, TATE Modern, Museum of Modern Art, Bologna, de Young Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has also published several monographs, including Place, History, and the Archive (2018), In Situ: Traces of Morandi (2017), Cross Sections (2001), Art & Science: Investigating Matter (1996), Home and Other Stories (1993), and American Classroom (1988).

Wagner is an Emeritus Professor of Studio Art at Mills College at Northeastern University.

Catherine Wagner is represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, CA and Gallery Luisotti, Los Angeles, CA.

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