Josephine Halvorson (she/her) makes art from direct observation, foregrounding the firsthand experience of noticing, describing, and learning from the physical world. She works primarily in painting, but also in sculpture and printmaking.

Halvorson received her MFA from Columbia University in 2007, her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2003, and attended Yale Norfolk in 2002. She is the recipient of major international residencies and fellowships, including a US Fulbright to Vienna, Austria; the Harriet Hale Woolley Award at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, France; the first American pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici; and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Halvorson’s work is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY, and Peter Freeman, Paris. She has presented work internationally at such institutions as the Storm King Art Center, the ICA Boston, and the Havana Biennale. In 2021 she presented a solo exhibition of site responsive work at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM, where she was the Museum’s first artist in residence. In 2024 she presented a solo exhibition at James Fuentes, Los Angeles, accompanied by a paperback monograph.

Her work and practice have been written about widely and she is a subject of Art21’s documentary series New York Close Up. She has been interviewed by the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Artforum, and appeared in such publications as Painting Now by Suzanne Hudson, Vitamin P2 edited by Barry Schwabsky, and Prints and Their Makers by Phil Sanders.

Since 2016, Halvorson is Professor of Art and Chair of Graduate Studies in Painting at Boston University. She has also taught at The Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, The Cooper Union, Princeton University, the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Columbia University, and Yale University.

Download CV