New Magic in a Dusty World: Making Matt Baumgardner in 1980s New York

Biography

Matthew Clay Baumgardner (1955-2018) was born in Columbus, OH. He moved to Greenville, SC in 1974 to attend Bob Jones University for his undergraduate studies. In 1980, he moved to Chapel Hill, NC to pursue his MFA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1982 he moved to New York City as a professional artist, with his studio initially in Red Hook and most recently in the East Village. In 2006, he relocated to scenic Travelers Rest, South Carolina -- between Greenville, SC and Asheville, NC -- where he designed and built a studio haven in 2009.

Since 1978 Baumgardner's paintings, drawings, and sculptures have been exhibited in internationally-recognized galleries such as Charles Cowles (New York), Edward Thorpe (New York), Jeffery Coploff (New York), Wessell O'Connor (New York), Bentley Gallery (then - Scottsdale), Carrie Secrist (Chicago), and LewAllen Contemporary (Santa Fe).  In 2012, the Greenville County Museum of Art presented a survey of his work spanning 1986-2010 in the major solo exhibition "Made for Another World".  Since his passing, Baumgardner's archives have been studied, documented and curated by the Furman University Art Department through an ongoing collaboration with his estate, as reflected in their website BaumgardnerArchives.com.

Baumgardner's works have received favorable notices in publications such as The New York Observer (Grace Glueck), The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Chicago Tribune. In 1980 "Neighborhood of Squares" was selected in a juried competition for the Gibbes Museum by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith. In 1993 Baumgardner received a $20,000 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for his birch plywood series.