Beverly Semmes

Beverly Semmes (b. 1958, Washington DC) is a New York-based artist whose work incorporates painting, drawing, film, photography, and performance. Her practice explores the complexities and pleasures entangled in the representation of the female body in media and culture. Semmes received an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1987, following studies at the Boston Museum School, Skowhegan School of Art, and Tufts University.  In September 2025, a survey of her practice will open at the Tufts University Art Galleries, curated by Dina Deitsch. 

​

Semmes' many solo museum exhibitions include presentations at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the ICA Philadelphia; the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; The Ginza Art Space, Tokyo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Recent group exhibitions include Always In Relation: 50 Years of the Gallery at Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown; The New Village: Ten Years of New York Fashion at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC as well as Witch Hunt at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the 57th Carnegie International, at the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. Semmes’ work can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, The Netherlands, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, among others.