Nathaniel Donnett
Curriculum Vitae
Nathaniel Donnett (b. Houston, TX) is a cultural practitioner whose practice shapes and holds philosophical and psychological significance. His work is rooted in Black cultural expression, everyday aesthetic theory, vernacular architecture, and the lived experience. Donnett works across diverse media, including mixed-media paintings, sculpture, installation, sound, video, and community based projects. Donnett situates sociopolitical and cultural concerns, such as notions of the enclosure, and heterotopias, alongside broader themes, such as material imagination, dreams, the (in) between, and fiction. Further, he disrupts linear timeline narratives by recontextualizing objects and materials to expand their potential for meaning and to raise questions. Donnett's practice is a conceptual and formal mode of inquiry exploring the poetics of space, time, and the cosmology of Black American phenomena, a term Donnett calls Dark Imaginarence.
Nathaniel received his B.A. from Texas Southern University and his MFA from Yale University. He received the 2024 – 25 Cynthia Woods Mitchell University of Houston Scholar in Residence, the 2024 Houston Region Affiliate Fellowship at the American Academy of Rome, and a 2022 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He also received the Helen Frankenthaler Scholarship from Yale University (2020 -2021), a Dean's Critical Practice Research Grant, an Art and Social Justice Initiative Grant from Yale, and the Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant (2017). His work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; the Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, Virginia; the University Museum, Houston, TX; and more.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2023 -24 Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Imaginarence
University Museum, Houston, TX
2022 To Know a Veil, MCLA Gallery 51, North Adams, MA
Nathaniel Donnett, n. masani landfair/ and/ or/ existence
Cindy Rucker Gallery, New York, NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2024 Solid State; a Celebration of the Material World, Sculpture Month Houston
Houston, TX - Forthcoming
Strangeness, Tone, Translucency, McClain Gallery, Houston, TX
Post Hip Hop? or return of the Boom Bap!, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX
Strange Strings, Cindy Rucker Gallery, New York, NY
2023 AIM Biennial - Miami, FL
Post Hip Hop? or return of the Boom Bap!, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York, NY
2022 The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse (traveling)
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR
The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO
2021 The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, (traveling)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston, Houston, TX
Selected Awards/ Grants/ Fellowships
2024-25 University of Houston, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fellow
Scholar in Residence, Houston, TX
2024 American Academy of Rome Affiliated Fellow, Rome, Italy
2022 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, New York, NY
Support for Artists and Creative Individuals Grant
Houston Arts Alliance, Houston, TX
2021 Helen Frankenthaler Scholarship, Yale University, New Haven, CT
2020 Art and Social Justice Initiative Grant, Yale University, New Haven, CT
2020 Dean's Critical Practice Research Grant, Yale University, New Haven, CT
Selected Residencies
2024 - 25 University of Houston, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fellow
Scholar in Residence, Houston, TX
2024 American Academy of Rome Affiliated Fellowship Residency, Rome, Italy
Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL
2023 International Studio & Curatorial Program Residency, Brooklyn, NY
2022 Bemis Center Residency, Omaha, NE, MCLA Artist Lab North Adams, MA
Selected Art Talks - Lectures - Discussions
2024 - University of Houston, Art Dept, Houston, TX
2023 International Studio and Curatorial Program with Dana Robinson, Shanekia McIntosh
moderator Allison Glenn, New York, NY
2022 Clark Art Institute, Roundtable on Blackness as a Multifaceted Experience
with Joshua AM Ross, Conrad Egyir, & Moderator Caroline Fowler, Williamstown, MA
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Closing Lecture, moderator Erica Wall
North Adams, MA
2021 Yale School of Art, Power and Possibilities, with Maria de Los Angeles
Moderator Lindsay Mancini, New Haven, CT
Bibliography
2024 Robert Sweeney, Digital Visual Art Education: Making, Learning
and Teaching with Digital Media, May 4
Burnaway Staff, Close Look, Atlanta, GA, Feb 17
2023 Nathaniel Donnett, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Imaginarence
Houston, TX, Dec 2
Peter Warren, New art exhibit at Texas Southern inspired by man
who almost became the first Black astronaut, Houston Chronicle
Houston, TX, Dec 21
Sikkema Jenkins and Co., Post Hip - Hop? or return of the Boom Bap!
Sikkema Jenkins & Co Gallery, New York, NY, Jul 10
Michael Corris, Nathaniel Donnett, Massachussetts College of Liberal Arts Gallery 51
Artforum, Print, North Adams, MA, March 1
Stacy J. Pratt, The Dirty South Comes to Denver, Hyperallergic, Denver, CO, Jan 13
2022 Amarie Gipson, The South Speaks, Rice Design Alliance, Houston, TX
Michael McFadden, The South's Got Something to Say: Dirty South at CAMH
Arts and Culture Texas, Houston, TX, Jan 22.
2021 Valerie Cassel Oliver, The Dirty South Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and
the Sonic Impulse, Richmond, VA, Sept
Molly Glentzer, Black Southern Music and Art Merge in "The Dirty South"
Texas Monthly, Houston, TX, Dec 6.
Holland Cotter, Art Meets Its Soundtrack Deep in The Dirty South,
New York Times, New York, NY, Jul 15.
Documentaries
2018 What's The New News Documentary, Produced by Nathaniel Donnett
& Brenda Cruz Wolf, 27 min
Public Collections
Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS
Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT
Microsoft Arts Collection, Dallas, TX
Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection -The Bunker, West Palm Beach, FL