Visual Arts Faculty

Daniel Heyman

Daniel Heyman headshot

About

Daniel Heyman has concentrated his art on making images about the war in Iraq, specifically the abuse and torture of innocent Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and other prisons.  For this work, Heyman traveled to Jordan and Turkey where he spoke face to face with over 45 former detainees, painting their portraits and taking down their own versions of what happened to them at the hands of the American captors.  Three of these detainees have since been killed in the war.  He has also met and drawn portraits of survivors of the September 16, 2007, Blackwater attacks at Nasoor Square in Baghdad. Closer to home, Heyman has drawn portraits of 7 African American men in Philadelphia who have been helped by the National Comprehensive Center for Fathers after troubled youths in and out of prison, and he is beginning to work with Veterans living in a half-way home in north Philadelphia as part of “Shelter Philadelphia,” a series of projects and exhibitions across Philadelphia.

Many museums and libraries have acquired portfolios of Heyman’s work including the  Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Yale University Art Gallery, Baltimore Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, Hood Museum of Art, the RISD Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  He has been awarded a 2009 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, three RISD Professional Development Grants, an Independence Foundation Grant, a James Reynolds International Fellowship and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell and Millay art colonies.

Heyman’s work has been shown widely. Recent exhibitions of his work were held at the Nathan Cumings Foundation in New York , the McIninch Art Gallery at Southern New Hampshire University, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; University of Iowa Museum of Art; Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College; Katzen Museum of Art at American University; the DePaul University Museum of Art, Chicago; Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz; North Dakota Museum of Art; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; and New York Public Library. Future exhibitions are planned for List Gallery at Swarthmore College and Zilkah Gallery at Wesleyan University.  He has lectured in numerous museums and art schools around the country, most recently at Carleton College, the Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire, and the Cranbrook Museum of Art in Michigan.

Mr. Heyman’s work was featured in “Male Desire: Homosexual Desire in American Art,” (Harry Abrams, ’05) by Jonathan Weinberg, and has been reviewed in many publications including The New York Times, Art in America, The Chicago Tribune, National Public Radio, The Philadelphia Inquirer, City Paper, Boston Globe, as well as many other publications. His work was featured in Esquire in 2008, and the 2009 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading. Heyman holds degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania and currently teaches at Princeton and the Rhode Island School of Design. He grew up on Long Island.

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Campus Address

Lewis Center for the Arts
185 Nassau Street

Email Address

dheyman@princeton.edu