John White

19th century English landscape with man waiting for a plough team

1880

John M. White is a painter, sculptor and performance artist. He has been exhibiting publicly over 40 years. Culturally, politically and aesthetically influenced by the late 60’s, White’s work exemplifies this period of redefinition and experimentation. Throughout his career, he has focused on three major areas of work: performance art, site-specific installations and drawing and painting. Although always interdisciplinary , his work is primarily autobiographical in nature and always includes some element of humor. Considered one of the seminal California performance artists, White has staged hundreds of public performances since 1967, and is included in numerous public museum collections, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum in New York, La Foret Museum in Tokyo, Total Museum in Korea, Seattle Museum, Palm Springs Desert Museum, St. Louis Museum, Oakland Museum and others. He is the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts grants and has served as a panelist twice. During the city wide exhibition, PACIFIC STANDARD TIME, sponsored by the Getty, White was included in three major exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Paul Schimmel, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Pomona. He was awarded the New Talent Award from LACMA in 1971, CETA Grant in 1979 and Djerassi Fellowship in 1989. Since unofficially retiring from performance art in 1989 (there have been two exceptions "Annotated Lipschitz ," 1991 at the Los Angeles Music Center and "Circa" 1999 at the Armory Center in Pasadena) he has focused on installation and painting. Qualified historians may request access to the Smithsonian Institute Archives which has acquired White’s early sketches and notes.