Jerry Beck

Artist Works

Untitled - 2009
30 x 22 inches Mixed media on paper

Artist Bio

    Jerry Beck is a nationally recognized artist, educator, and cultural leader.  In 1984, he founded The Revolving Museum (TRM), a nomadic laboratory of creative expression that produces collaborative and interdisciplinary public art, exhibitions, educational programs, and special events.  In 2007, the museum received the Massachusetts Cultural Council's Commonwealth Award in the category of Community, the state's highest honors in the arts, humanities and sciences.  Beck is also the founder of TRM’s Visionary School, an authentic learning, project-based, public art curriculum program for high school and college students focused on the development of cultural and civic leadership.  

   Beck has been an artist-in-residence, teacher, lecturer, and community arts advisor with many cultural and educational institutions including the National Organization of Artist’s Spaces, College Art Association, New England Foundation for the Arts, Very Special Arts International, Maryland Institute College of Art, Art Institute of Boston at Lesley College, Massachusetts College of Art, Hartford Art School, Harvard University, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Syracuse University, Brown University, University of Massachusetts, Cultural Organization of Lowell, Headlands Center for the Arts, University of Texas, and Boston Public Schools.  
Beck has gotten many grants including multiple National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Arts International grant, New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) grants, Pew Charitable Trust grant, Berkshire Taconic Artist grant, and multiple Massachusetts Cultural Council grants. He received Fellowships from the “Achieving Excellence Arts Leadership Seminar Program,” sponsored by Massachusetts Cultural Council and Harvard University; and the Salzburg Global Seminar “Cultural Institutions without Walls: New Models of Arts-Community Interaction,” in Salzburg, Austria. He was Co-Director with Dr. John Warner of the first ever Pan-African Green Chemistry and Art Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.  Beck was a creativity consultant for University of Massachusetts/Lowell, in which he initiated collaborations between faculty members and students from diverse departments. He was also Host and Co-Producer of WUML-FM’s “Thinking Out Loud” radio show.

     Beck’s own artwork has been exhibited widely including at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Artists Space in New York City, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Capp Street Project in San Francisco, Mass MoCA, Snug Harbor Cultural Center in NY, Creative Time’s “Art on the Beach,” Miami Book Fair, Boston Center for the Arts, and at many alternative, under-utilized, and abandoned public spaces.   

     Beck has a BFA from Florida State University and an MFA from Tufts University-School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
He is currently the Resident Innovator at the Innovation Academy Charter School in Tyngsboro, MA; and the Resident Artist and Art & Science Project Leader at Beyond Benign, a foundation of the Warner Babcock Institute of Green Chemistry in Wilmington, MA.