Roger Welch Biography
Roger Welch was born in Westfield, New Jersey, in 1946.
He studied at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and in 1971 he specialized at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1970 to 1971 he completed the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York.
Welch's practice, which ranges from video installation to sculpture, from photography to works on paper and canvas, from conceptual art to performance, has been multidimensional since its beginnings in the 1970s. The themes of identity and personal memory are central to Welch's poetics.
Best known for his “Memory Maps” series (1973), in which he interviewed older adults, creating visual maps of their childhood memories of their hometowns. Memory is also at the heart of “Niagara Falls” (1974), a video installation created from the artist's interview with Roger Woodward, who, 14 years earlier, had survived the accidental fall over Niagara Falls. For the work "Laguna Sagaponack" (2006), Welch mounted cameras Laguna Beach, on the Pacific Ocean, and Sagaponack, Long Island, on the Atlantic. .
Welch received the New York State Council on Arts Creative Arts Public Service Program Fellowship (1973, 1976); he was granted a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in the visual arts (1974, 1980). His work has been presented around the world, including at the Milwaukee Art Center (1974); the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York (1977); the Museo de arte moderni, Mexico City (1980); and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1982). He has participated in group exhibitions at a number of international institutions: Palais des beaux-arts, Brussels (1974); Whitney Museum (1977); Center Georges Pompidou, Paris (1980); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1981); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1994); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2007). Welch lives and works in New York.
