The work of New York-based conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll (MEC, studios) engages the disciplines of architecture, public policy, film/media, and technology. Carroll’s body of work spans over four decades in a range of media that transcend genres. Fundamentally, the work investigates a single, fundamental question: What do we consider a work of art? It is dedicated to a social and political critique that explores the interactions of subjectivity, language, power, and knowledge. 

Carroll is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including from the Guggenheim Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, American Academy in Berlin, Rockefeller Foundation, Rauschenberg Foundation, Graham Foundation, and most recently the American Academy in Rome. Carroll received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago (1989) where they studied time-based arts, filmmaking, and architectural history, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from University of Colorado Boulder. Teaching, lecturing and public presentations on architecture, art, and public policy are an important part of Carroll’s work and have occurred at the DIA Art Foundation, Columbia University, American Academy in Berlin, Rice University, Yale University, among others.

Carroll’s work is in numerous public and private collections in the US and abroad and has been exhibited at institutions including: the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Johann Jacobs Museum, Zurich; Prospect.3, New Orleans; Busan Biennial, South Korea; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MoMA-PS1; MUMOK, Vienna; Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University; Alserkal Avenue, Dubai; among other venues. This is the first major solo museum exhibition of the artist’s work.

Rebecca Matalon is Senior Curator at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), where she has organized exhibitions for artists Garrett Bradley, Mariah Garnett, Diane Severin Nguyen, Cauleen Smith, and Jordan Strafer, as well as the two-person exhibition, Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray & Jessi Reaves (2021). Matalon is currently working on Mary Ellen Carroll: How to Talk Dirty and Influence People (2025), the first major survey exhibition of the work of Mary Ellen Carroll, among other projects.

Previously, Matalon was Assistant Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), where she organized exhibitions including Tongues Untied (2015), Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a Lady? (2016), Welcome to the Dollhouse (2018), and Décor: Barbara Bloom, Andrea Fraser, Louise Lawler (2018). In 2018, she co-organized Zoe Leonard: Survey, a major mid-career retrospective of the work of Zoe Leonard, which debuted at The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York before traveling to The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Matalon was a Co-Founder, and from 2015–2018, Curator at JOAN, a not-for-profit exhibition space in Los Angeles that is dedicated to presenting the work of emerging and under-represented artists. She has contributed writing to multiple publications and regularly lectures on contemporary art and curating. Matalon serves on the board of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) and was on the Organizing Committee of Texas Talks Art, a multi-institutional initiative that launched in January 2021.