Stephen Westfall
Stephen Westfall received his MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work was represented by Lennon, Weinberg in New York from 1997 to 2019. He is currently represented in New York by Alexandre Gallery. He has had 50 solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe.
Westfall’s are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Metropolitan Museum in New York; the Kemper Museum in Kansas City; the Louisiana Museum in Humleback, Denmark; the Munson Williams Proctor Museum in Utica; New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Library of Congress; the Museum of Art and Architecture at UC Santa Barbara; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University.
Westfall’s own writing has been extensively published in such journals as Arts, Art in America, Flash Art, the Brooklyn Rail, and Bomb among others. He was for years a Contributing Editor to Art in America. He has also authored over a hundred gallery and museum catalog essays, most recently for octogenarian, Susan Fortgang’s critically acclaimed first solo exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery.
Westfall has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Nancy Graves Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He received a Rome Prize Fellowship and spent a year at the American Academy in Rome during 2009-2010. In 2024 he was given the Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award by the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been given the title, Professor Emeritus at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where he was Graduate Director from 2010 to 2015, and Undergraduate Director from 2020 to 2021; and a former lecturer and Painting Chair at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, where he taught for 32 years. He has held Distinguished Chairs at Colgate University in 1999 and Princeton University in 2005.
Stephen's Upcoming Workshops
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IV
Level IV
Students have advanced skill and knowledge of painting and drawing. Students are highly motivated and self-directed, have a minimum of five years experience in their field and have multiple portfolios of their artwork. Portfolio review is required for admittance to some Level IV classes.
Aug 11 - 15, 2025
9AM - 5PM
Advanced Mentored Studies: Topics in Painting: Studio Practice and Critique
Holly Hughes, Stephen Westfall
Tuition $2,730
Code D1124-25
This three-year advanced mentorship program encourages students to push their studio practice. Working at a rigorous pace, engaging in critical dialogue with the group and with the instructors in individual critique, artists refine and expand their investigations. Wide-ranging topics include concept and approach to contemporary art practice as well as technical and material explorations. Students are expected to work independently with the support of their class peers and instructors, raising the ambition of their own studio goals. Although primarily a painting workshop, participation by installation artists and other artists working across media is encouraged. The goal of the series is for students to gain community, develop insight into their work and, through discussion, challenge themselves to reflect on their artistic intentions. 2025 is the first year of this three-year intensive program. In the subsequent two years of the program, the cohort meets in-person at Anderson Ranch from August 10th - 14th, 2026 and August 16th - 20th, 2027. Over the course of the program, there are group and one-on-one meetings via Zoom in March and October of each year. The final meeting is via Zoom in October 2027. Tuition listed is the program cost per year. TO APPLY: Applications for enrollment are accepted on a rolling basis. To apply, please fill out the 2025 Advanced Mentored Studies Online Application Form. This is a rolling application with a priority deadline of Monday, February 3rd.