David Hartt

Employment is recorded with University of Pennsylvania. Work by David Hartt is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem and J. Paul Getty Museum. Distinctions recorded are Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Graham Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Art.

• Website — davidhartt.net • Known for — Interdisciplinary artist • Education — University of Ottawa and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago • Name — David Hartt • Born — 1967 • Birthplace — Montreal

Hartt received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa in 1991 and a Master in Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994.

Hartt travels extensively to develop his research based work. In 2015, Hartt was included in the survey Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015 at the Museum of Modern Art. In the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017, Hartt produced a series of interventions on Habitat Puerto Rico, a housing development initially designed by Moshe Safdie and subsequently abandoned by the Puerto Rican government in the 1970s. By placing videos, sculpture, sound, photographs alongside plants and other biomaterials, Hartt attempted to investigate the site not as the development it was intended to be but as what it became. ‘What's interesting is not only the response to the failed utopia, but really using Safdie's project as evidence of which to examine the contemporary context of Puerto Rico, looking its status as colonial state, the debt crisis, the failures of new liberalism. For me it's an amplifier, it's a way through which I can begin to explore these ideas.’ In 2021, the Philadelphia Museum of Art celebrated their reopening after a $228 million reconstruction with the exhibition New Grit: Art & Philly Now in which Hartt is featured. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Fine Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Hartt is represented by David Nolan Gallery. He is also a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective.

David Hartt is recorded with the occupation visual artist. Recorded as artist and photographer.