TRISHA BROWN
1936-2017
Trisha Brown was born and raised in Aberdeen, Washington. She graduated from Mills College in 1958, studied with Anna Halprin and taught at Reed College in Portland before moving to New York City in 1961, where she became a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater. In 1970, she co-founded the dance collective Grand Union and formed the Trisha Brown Dance Company.
While best known for her career as an avant-garde dancer and choreographer, with nearly 100 dance works to her credit, Brown consistently sought to integrate the visual arts with her performance practice. She collaborated with artists on set and costume designs for her performances, including the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, but for many years she produced her own body of work, primarily in the form of drawings, that meld the art of dance and the visual arts.
In 2008, the Walker Art Center organized a major survey exhibition of Brown’s drawings. Curated by Peter Eleey, Trisha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing traveled to the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland and Musée d’art Contemporain de Lyon.