Michael Huey (artist)

Huey was born in Traverse City, Michigan. He graduated from Amherst College in 1987 with a degree in German Studies. He has lived in Vienna since 1989, and received a master's degree in art history at the University of Vienna in 1999;[1] his thesis dealt with the Neo-Rococo renovation, during the 1830s and '40s, of the Baroque Stadtpalais Liechtenstein in Vienna by English architect and civil engineer Peter Hubert Desvignes. He is married to Viennese art historian Christian Witt-Dörring.[4]

Alongside his artistic practice, Huey has also published extensively, first as a staff member of The Christian Science Monitor, and more recently as a memoirist writing at length about his family's roots in Chicago and Leelanau County, Michigan. He is a regular and longtime contributor to the London-based magazine The World of Interiors and has written frequently about art and design for exhibition catalogues, newspapers, and magazines in both Europe and the United States.[7]

Huey's artistic practice has been closely linked by critics to his interest in family history, archives, and inventories. Conceptually, the topics loss and legacy—broadly speaking, memory—tie together his works over a wide range of media. One technique of his has been to re-photograph and re-use existing (often vintage) photographs and papers. In recent years his exhibitions have increasingly included found objects that are highlighted and brought into dialogue with image-based works. A number of shows have been installations of large-scale wall paintings or wallpapers of his design. The arts magazine EIKON has written that Huey's works "are like news that reaches us from the past and are kept as poetry in time."[8][9]

According to Artforum magazine, "Huey's process defamiliarizes...objects to the extent that they become alien, worthy of scrutiny."[5]

Images from Huey's "China Cupboard" series have been likened by The New Yorker to the work of early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot.[6]

Individual works by Huey have been shown at the Kunsthalle Wien, the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.[3][10] In 2014 he joined the Secession, the Viennese artists’ association founded in 1897 by Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann, and Joseph Maria Olbrich, among others.[11]

• 2017 — Family Tree, Galerie Reinthaler, Vienna
• 2017 — Boy's Room, Galerie Reinthaler/die Vitrine, Vienna
• 2015 — Proof, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna
• 2015 — all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know, Georg Kargl/Permanent, Vienna
• 2014 — The Darling of Decay, Galerie Reinthaler, Vienna
• 2012 — Archivaria, Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna
• 2011 — China Cupboard, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York
• 2010 — Houseguests, Galerie Schloss Damtschach
• 2010 — Story Problems, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, co-curated by Jasper Sharp
• 2009 — Don't Say Things, Kunsthalle Vienna, curated by Angela Stief
• 2009 — ASH, Inc., Song Song, Vienna
• 2007 — Keep in Safe Place, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York
• 2007 — Ruined Album, Blumen, Vienna
• 2007 — Betsy and I Killed the Bear, Charim Galerie, Vienna
• 2005 — Full Death, Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna

• 2020 — RBF, Galerie Reinthaler, Vienna
• 2019 — Labor Bestiarium Wunderkammer, curated by Vitus Weh for NOW/Esterházy Contemporary, Schloss Esterházy, Eisenstadt
• 2018 — Uncanny Valley, organized by Francis Ruyter at Vin Vin, Vienna
• 2017 — Absolute Duration, with Miguel Branco and Wolfgang Wirth, Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa, Lisbon
• 2017 — A Place in the East, with Miguel Branco and Wolfgang Wirth, João Esteves de Oliveira Gallery, Lisbon
• 2015 — Display of the Centuries – Frederick Kiesler and Contemporary Art, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
• 2015 — (S)Pacings, with Kelly Sena, Musiz Foundation, Sofia, Bulgaria, curated by Ivan Moudov
• 2013 — The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection, Cleveland Museum of Art
• 2013 — This Just In, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts
• 2012 — Tag- und Nachtbilder, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg
• 2011 — Stuff: Still Life Photography, curated by Vince Aletti
• 2011 — Natura Morta, Pobeda Gallery, Moscow
• 2010 — Gifted, Josh Lilley Galley, London, curated by Ben Street
• 2009 — Forschungsbericht, CoCo, Vienna, curated by Severin Dünser and Christian Kobald
• 2009 — The Red Thread, Galerie Dana Charkasi, Vienna, curated by Julie Ryan
• 2008 — In-Visible Spaces, Galleria Ugo Ferranti, Rome
• 2008 — Lost + Found, Schloss Hollenburg, curated by Maximilian von Geymüller
• 2006 — Drawing Room, Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York
• 2006 — The Image is Gone, Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna
• 2004 — The Rose Garden Without Thorns, Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna

(Huey as author unless otherwise indicated)

• 2021 — Inside Stories — Writing About Home (Album Verlag, Vienna)
• 2013 — Straight as the Pine, Sturdy as the Oak: Skipper & Cora Beals and Major & Helen Huey in the Early Years of Camp Leelanau for Boys, the Leelanau Schools, and the Homestead in Glen Arbor/Volume One: 1921-1963 (Schlebrügge.Editor, Vienna)
• 2012 — Archivaria (editor and author, with an essay by Catharina Kahane) (Schlebrügge.Editor, Vienna)
• 2011 — Dearie — The Louis Betts Portrait of Harriet King Huey (Schlebrügge.Editor, Vienna)
• 2011 — China Cupboard/Houseguests (editor and author, with essays by Jennie Hirsh and Philipp Blom) (Schlebrügge.Editor, Vienna)
• 2008 — ASH, inc. (editor and author, with essays by Abraham Orden and Jasper Sharp) (Schlebrügge.Editor, Vienna)
• 2007 — Betsy and I Killed the Bear (editor and author, with an essay by J.S. Marcus) (Schlebrügge.Editor, Vienna)
• 2006 — Josef Hoffmann Interiors 1902-1913 (contributor) (Prestel Verlag/Neue Galerie New York)
• 2003 — Viennese Silver — Modern Design 1780-1918 (editor and author) (Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern for the Neue Galerie New York and the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)
• 2001 — The Place of Beginning: On the Huey, Mautz, Lebzelter, McGowan Families and Their Kin

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