Beverly Semmes

Beverly Semmes is an interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates sculpture, painting, drawing, film, photography, performance, and fashion. These complementary elements probe the paradoxes and complexities of the female body and its representation.

Born in Washington, D.C., and based in New York City since 1982, Semmes has had solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the ICA Philadelphia, the MCA Chicago, the Henry Art Gallery, and the Ginza Art Space, among others. Tufts University Art Galleries will present a five-decade survey of Semmes’ practice on view from July 29 through November 23, 2025. This retrospective coincides with a solo presentation at MOCA Cleveland beginning in June 2025 followed by a one-person show at Official Welcome in Los Angeles in January 2026.

In 2014, Semmes, with Jennifer Minniti, founded the CarWash Collective to design garments that extend the visual language of the artist’s Feminist Responsibility Project. Often enlivened through performance, the collection addresses themes of exposure, concealment, reflection, and distortion in relation to gender, sexuality, and the self. CarWash has exhibited at JOAN, the 57th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Susan Inglett Gallery, and Samsøñ Projects. CarWash will exhibit its new collection at Kapp Kapp during Fashion Week in September 2025.

Semmes will be featured in the upcoming group exhibitions: Everyday Revolutions at the Brooklyn Museum, Fictions of Display at MOCA LA, Fabricated Imaginaries: Crafting Art at the Rose Art Museum, and Contemporary Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass. Recently, the artist was included in Tea Party at Locks Gallery, Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years at Grey Art Museum, Generations: 150 Years Of Sculpture at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Wonderland: Curious Nature at the New York Botanical Gardens, as well as Witch Hunt at the Hammer Museum, and the 57th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum.

Semmes received her MFA in Sculpture in 1987 from the Yale School of Art. She also studied at the New York Studio School, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where she has served on the Board of Governors since 2000.

Semmes’s works are included in numerous permanent collections, including the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Walker Art Center, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Museum Arnhem, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.