Scott Burton

Scott Burton was born in Greensboro, Alabama, and moved with his mother to Washington, DC, as a child. While in high school, he studied informally with the painter Leon Berkowitz, and after graduation, with Hans Hofmann at his painting school in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in 1962 and a Master of Arts in literature from New York University in 1963. He went on to work as a freelance critic for Art News. In the early 1970s, he created "behavior tableaux," in which silent performers interacted with furniture the artist collected. From that point on, Burton’s use of furniture developed into his signature motif. A student of Modernist furniture design, he explored the ambiguities between art and design, sculpture and furniture. Later in the decade he became interested in the choreography of social interaction through the design and arrangement of public seating. Burton's sculptures are included in collections including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humblebaek, Denmark. His work has been included in many group exhibitions, and solo shows have taken place at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; the Tate Gallery, London; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and by museums in Düsseldorf and Stuttgart, Germany. Scott Burton died in New York in 1989.