Mark Dion

Mark Dion –Museum visits first, then art studies

Mark Dion was born on 28 August 1961 in the port city of New Bedford in the US state of Massachusetts. He came from a culturally-poor, working-class family and spent most of his childhood and youth in Fairhaven, where he witnessed first-hand the economic difficulties of the people following the decline of the fishing industry. Although Mark Dion did not visit a museum until he was 18, it was museums such as the New Bedford Whaling Museum combined with the historic architecture of both towns of his childhood and youth that he retrospectively credited for his awakening interest in art. In 1981, Dion began studies at the University of Hartford and also attended courses at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1983 to 1984. He later also took part in a one-year study programme at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he was taught by the conceptual artists Hans Haacke (born 1936) and Joseph Kosuth (born 1945) as well as the media artist Barbara Kruger (born 1945).

Discovering and collecting as an artistic act

Mark Dion was interested not only in the visual arts but also in the natural sciences and attended biology courses and seminars to gain a solid foundation in this field. His thirst for research and discovery culminated in a pronounced passion for collecting and an interdisciplinary artistic approach. One way Dion financed his studies was by working as an art curator in SoHo, Manhattan, specialising in 19th century American art, and this direct contact with works of art made a great impression on him. Dion received his Bachelor of Arts in 1986 and following his studies, was initially involved in several small projects before making a name for himself in 1999 with the Tate Thames Dig project for the Tate Gallery. Together with volunteers, he combed the banks of the Thames in front of the Tate Modern for artefacts and objects such as oyster shells, cattle teeth, toys, shoes, bottle, and more, which were cleaned and identified by experts in tents and then turned into a work of art by Mark Dion: Urban archaeology as an art project, corresponding to the artist's thirst for research and collecting.

Cabinets of curiosities and closed ecosystems

Mark Dion has remained true to his artistic approach of creating new installations from collected objects which included already created sculptures and photographs. As a result, his art installations sometimes seem like natural history exhibitions to the public. In 2001, the artist opened his Cabinet of Curiosities at the Weisman Art Museum, and in 2021 his Vivarium at the University of Vienna, for which he arranged a decaying tree trunk as a closed ecosystem and breeding ground for fungi and microorganisms. The echo of the historical Vivarium research institute, which was closed after Austria's annexation by Nazi Germany and later probably destroyed by SS grenades, was initially a coincidence, but was deliberately emphasised by the organisers after it became known.

Mark Dion lives with his wife, the artist Dana Sherwood, in Copake, New York.