DOUG ASHFORD
Assistant Professor

"Resistance: Anti-Baudrillard" at White Columns, New York, 1987
(click on image for larger view)

Doug Ashford is an artist and a teacher. After receiving a BFA from Cooper Union in 1981, he became a member of the artists collective Group Material which was his principal art practice until 1997. Group Material produced over forty exhibitions and public projects internationally, using museum and other public spaces as cultural arenas in which audiences were invited to imagine democratic forms. Prominent in this history are the exhibitions "The Castle" (documenta 8, Kassel, Germany, 1987), "Democracy" (The Dia Art Foundation, New York, 1988) and "AIDS Timeline" (The Berkeley Art Museum 1989, Wadsworth Atheneum, 1990, The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1991). The collaborative group's essays and publications on the role of exhibition practices in design, public culture and display, and the value of democratic mobilization in the cultural arena continue to affect art practice both within the world of visual culture and in other disciplines. Since the disbanding of Group Material in 1997, Ashford has gone on to produce exhibitions and publish articles independently, although his primary creative practice has been teaching.

Ashford has taught three-dimensional design, sculpture and interdisciplinary theory at The Cooper Union School of Art for many years. He has taught in many diverse settings: from public high schools to graduate seminars, professional panels and community organizations. He recently retired as the Director of the Vermont College MFA in Visual Art Program, an experimental graduate program committed to situational pedagogy. Currently Ashford organizes the Intra-disciplinary Seminar of the School of Art, a school-wide forum committed to the critical re-definition of visual practices.

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