Bio
Born in 1944 and raised in Kansas City, Evans lived for years in Salina, Kansas, before moving to Chicago in the early 1990s. Her love and concern for the prairie–her native landscape, the nation’s heartland–has inspired and informed her entire artistic career. In highlighting the beauty and complexity of a subtle and often overlooked landscape, One of the nation’s finest landscape photographers, Evans, is widely recognized for her views of the Midwest prairie, its people, and its artifacts.
Evans has exhibited widely, including one person shows at The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, The Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and The Field Museum. Her work is in major museum collections including The Nelson Atkins Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Amon Carter Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, the George Eastman House, the Hirshhorn Museum of Art,and the Tokyo Fuji Museum. Evans is a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient.
Solo Exhibitions
2021 Ancient Prairies, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York
2020 Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville , Florida, Terry Evans: Stories of the Prairies
2019 The Inhabited Prairie, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York
2014 Meet Me at the Trinity: Photographs by Terry Evans, Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth, TX
2014 Fractured: North Dakota’s Oil Boom, text by Elizabeth Farnsworth, The North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND
2013 Fractured: North Dakota’s Oil Boom, text by Elizabeth Farnsworth, The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
2013 Heartland Retrospective, Snite Museum of Art, Notre Dame, IN
2012 Heartland Retrospective, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
2012 Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2011 Matfield Green, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS
2009 A Greenland Glacier: The Scale of Climate Change, Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS
2009 Steel, Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica, CA
2008 Exploring the Collection: Photographs of Terry Evans, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL
2007 Revealing Chicago, Clam-Gallas Palace, Prague, Czech Republic
2006 Chicago’s Backyards, Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica, CA
2005 Revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrait, Millennium Park, Chicago, IL
2003 Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2002 From Prairie to Field, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
2002 Tales from the Prairie, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY
2001 In Place of Prairie, Center for Great Plains Studies, Lincoln, NE
2001 Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO
2001 Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY
2000 Carol Ehlers Gallery, Chicago, IL
2000 In Place of Prairie, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO
Selected Group Exhibitions
2021 Devour the Land-War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970, Cambridge, Harvard Art Museums, curated by Makeda Best
2021 Love in the Time of the Anthropocene, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
2021 Time and Place: Water, Sky, Land, Curated by Anne Tucker, Maier Museum of Art, Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA
2019 The Power of Place, Spencer Museum of Art
2019 A River Runs Through It, Museum of Nebraska Art
2018 Big Botany, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas
2018 View Finder: Leisure and Landscape in the Permanent Collection, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL
2018 Permanent Collection Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, IL
2016 Tracing Dirty Energy, Museum of Contemporary Photography
2016 Picturing the Prairie, Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA
2016 No Mountains in the Way, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington DC
2015 No Mountains in the Way, Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS
2015 This Big Land, Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE
2015 Permanence/Impermanence, University of North Texas, Denton, TX
2015 Climate of Concern, Cattholic Theological Union, Chicago, IL
2014-15 Millennium Park: An Anatomy in Photographs, Millennium Park, Chicago, IL
2014 Fractured: North Dakota’s Oil Boom, text by Elizabeth Farnsworth, Center for Art+Environment, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV
2013 Climate of Uncertainty, DePaul Museum of Art, Chicago, IL
2013 A Democracy of Images, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
2013 From Above: Aerial Photography, Center for Creative Photography, Tuscon, AZ
2012 The Altered Landscapes, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV
2012 American in View: Landscape Photography 1865 to Now, RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI
2011 Beautiful Vagabonds, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY
2011 Masterworks, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, TX
2011 Winged Shadows, North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND
2011 Public Works, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL
2011 Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM
2011 Eye Wonder: Photography From the Bank of America Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.
2010 Proof, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2010 On the Road: A Legacy of Walker Evans, Rober Lehman Art Center, North Andover, MA
2008 Picturing Modernity: The Photography Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
2006 Eyes on Collections, Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Otherworlds, Sofa Gallery, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
2005 National Academy of Science, Washington, DC
2005 Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
2005 Homage to the Flint Hills, traveling exhibition
2005 On View: Photographing the Museum,Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY
2005 Off the Wall: A Rotation of Gallery Artists, Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago, IL
2003 In Response to Place, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
2003 New to View, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2003 Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
2002 Masterworks of American Photography, Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth, TX
2002 Photographers and Writers, etc., Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA
2002 Visions of America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
2001 In Response to Place, Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C.; Akron Museum of Art, Akron, OH
2001 Center of Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ
2000 Indivisble, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
2000 All Terrain, Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA
2000 This is North America/Is this N.A.?, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI
2000 Chicago in the Year 2000, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL
2000 The Landscape We Make, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL
2000 The Inhabited Prairie, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR
2000 Wendy Cooper Gallery, Madison, WI
2000 Indivisible, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago (Traveling)
2000 Chicago in the Year 2000, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
2000 Crossing the Line, Photography Reconsidered, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2000 Visions of Prairie, Center for Great Planes Study, Lincoln, NE
2000 Water in The West, Humboldt State University, St. Arcata, CA
Selected Honors & Awards
2006 Anonymous Was A Woman Fellowship
1996 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship
1995 Joliet Arsenal, Openlands Project, Chicago
1983 Mid-America Arts Alliance/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1979 Prairie Roots/Human Roots, Kansas Committee for the Humanities
1974 No Mountains in the Way, National Endowment for the Arts
1973 Kansas in Transition, Kansas Committee for the Humanities