Beverly McIver
Greensboro, NC
Visual Art
Beverly McIver is widely acknowledged as a significant presence in contemporary American art and has charted a new direction as an African American woman artist. She is committed to producing art that consistently examines racial, gender, social and occupational identity.
McIver was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1962. She is the youngest of three girls born to Ethel McIver. Her oldest sister Renee is mentally disabled, with the mindset of a second grader. Beverly is Renee’s legal guardian. Renee is a frequent subject of the artist, as are other family members.
McIver’s work is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the NCCU Museum of Art, the Asheville Museum of Art, The Crocker Art Museum, the Nelson Fine Arts Center Art Museum at Arizona State University, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Cameron Art Museum and the Mint Museum as well as significant corporate and private collections. McIver is currently the Ebenshade Professor of the Practice in Studio Arts At Duke University. She was the Suntrust Endowed Chair Professor of Art at North Carolina Central University, 2007-2014. Prior to this appointment, McIver taught at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. for twelve years, Duke University, North Carolina State University and North Carolina Central University. She has also held residencies at many of the nation’s leading artist communities, including YADDO, the Headland Center for the Arts, Djerassi, and Penland School of Arts and Crafts. She has served on the board at Penland, and currently serves on the board of directors at YADDO in Saratoga Springs, NY.
“Raising Renee”, a feature-length documentary film produced in association with HBO by Academy Award-nominated and award-winning filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, tells the story of the impact of McIver’s promise to care for her sister when their mother dies. The film played in festivals around the country, was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming, and now is available on Amazon Prime.
Recent honors include a yearlong residency at the American Academy in Rome, where she was featured in a Beverly McIver e il colore nero, a documentary for Italian television. In 2017 she received the lifetime achievement award from the Anyone Can Fly Foundation in a ceremony hosted by Faith Ringgold. McIver was named as one of the “Top Ten in Painting” in Art in America in 2011, and her work has been reviewed in Art News, The New York Times and a host of local newspapers. She has received numerous grants and awards including the Anonymous Was A Woman Foundation grant, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University, a Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation award, a distinguished Alumni Award from Pennsylvania State University, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and Creative Capital grant. She had a solo exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2011, and at the Mint Museum in 2012. During the fall of 2014, McIver was Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, N.C. McIver received a master of fine arts degree in painting from Pennsylvania State University, and an honorary doctorate from North Carolina Central University.
A career survey of the artist’s work begins at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in 2022, before touring the country. McIver is curating a show of contemporary African American artists working in North Carolina for Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, NC in 2021.