Tom Otterness

Tom Otterness moved to New York in 1970 to attend the Art Students League and then the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. Otterness now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His studio is populated by the countless wax, clay, and plaster models of his unique menagerie. These figures are constantly reinvented and recombined to create his full-scale sculptures that are ultimately cast in bronze. During his first years in New York, otterness worked as a night watchman at the American Museum of Natural History, where the elaborately staged dioramas fueled his imagination and can still be sensed in his own complex sculpture installations for city parks, subway stations, hospitals, universities, libraries, government buildings, and museums. Otterness’ work is in the collections of many museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.