Petah Coyne 佩塔．科因

Petah Coyne

Petah Coyne (b. 1953), born in Oklahoma City, is a sculptor and photographer based in New York. Coyne is best known for her large-scale hanging sculptures and floor installations. Working in innovative and disparate materials, her media has ranged from organic to ephemeral. Dead fish, mud, sticks, hay, black sand, specially formulated and patented wax, satin ribbons, silk flowers, shaved cars, and shredded trailers are a few of the things she has incorporated into her sculptures. More recently, she has worked with glass, velvet, taxidermy, cast wax statuary, and trees. Unafraid to confront a range of subjects or tackle contemporary themes, Coyne’s innate dualities are transposed in the dichotomous themes of her work: transformation and constancy, life and loss, beauty and darkness.

Coyne’s extensive exhibition history includes solo shows at Nunu Fine Art (Taipei, Taiwan), MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), Sculpture Center (Long Island City, NY), Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, OH), Kilkenny Castle (Kilkenny, Ireland), and Galerie Lelong & Co. (NYC). Coyne’s work has been presented in numerous group shows, including the recent exhibitions  “The Sky's the Limit,” presented in 2023 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.), “You Know Who,” in 2022 at Koç Holding, Abdülmecid Efendi Mansion (Istanbul, Turkey), and “APMA, CHAPTER THREE” in 2021 at the Amorepacific Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea).

Coyne’s work is in numerous permanent museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Denver Art Museum, Denver; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Finland; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada; Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal, Canada. 

 Select awards include the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award, The Rockefeller Foundation Award, three National Endowment for the Arts Awards, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Asian Cultural Council Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Award, three Artists Space Awards, and two International Association of Art Critics Awards. 

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