Art Box portal //
Marlon Mullen is a painter from Contra Costa County, California, who works at the NIAD Art Center. Born in 1963, he gained recognition thanks to his exhibition at the Whitney Biennial in 2019. In 2024, he made history by becoming the first artist with developmental disabilities to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. This event is significant not just for him, but also for promoting inclusion in the art community.
Marlon’s story shows how art can overcome barriers. He is autistic and primarily nonverbal, but that hasn’t stopped his artistic career.
‘Projects: Marlon Mullen is the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work by a major museum, on view in the Museum’s free, street-level Projects gallery from December 14, 2024, to April 20, 2025. Marlon Mullen (b. 1963) uses art publications and other print material as points of departure for his paintings, generating radical reimaginings of these sources in which text and image are transformed through his dynamic color and composition. Since 1986, Mullen has been based at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, California, a progressive studio for artists with developmental disabilities.’
(https://press.moma.org)
Organized by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, with Alexandra Morrison, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.
The Elaine Dannheisser Projects Series is made possible in part by the Elaine Dannheisser Foundation and The Young Patrons Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
Leave a Reply