Rachel Perry Welty ’80 was working in advertising as an art director when her mother invited Rachel to join her at the review board at the Museum School at the Museum of Fine Arts . “I remember being blown away by the work my mother had made, and also by the conversation surrounding the work. I had no idea that people talked this way about contemporary art and I was riveted. I grabbed the catalogue on my way out and sat in my car and read it from cover to back, picking every course I wanted to take. I went home that night and said to my husband ‘I think I want to go to art school.’”
Rachel did just that, graduating from 5th Year Program of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2001. She has gone on to appear in many group and solo exhibitions over the past decade and has also received numerous grants and awards, including being a finalist for the Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Her work has been acquired for the permanent collection at several museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston and the Baltimore Museum. “I’m probably best known for my video “Karaoke Wrong Number” in which I am lip-synching to all the wrong number messages I received on my answering machine over the course of about 4 years and my recent photographic series “Lost in My Life” is getting some attention now, but I think it’s always the next project, the one that hasn’t happened yet, that I am most excited about,” said Rachel.
Alumni in the Boston area will be able to see a survey of Rachel’s work over the past 10 years when her solo exhibit “Rachel Perry Welty 24/7”opens at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts on January 29. More information can be found at www.decordova.org and www.rachelperrywelty.com.
