ARTIST & CURATOR
Meg Rotzel (b. 1976, Appleton WI) is an artist and curator living in Boston, MA. Meg’s artwork, based in drawing and ceramics, is a material exploration of time, language, and seeing. She assembles artworks that address the phenomenon of sensing and making sense, meaning-making and the hierarchies of collections.
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SELECT WORK: The Word (Nai and Grace), The Big Shadow, Dawn and Dusk (The Animals),
Difficult Institutional Thought, QFA Grid Drawings, The Big Draw, Drawing in Clay and Ink
ARTIST PROFILE
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Meg’s curatorial work is situated in the interdisciplinary research university setting. As Curator of Exhibitions at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study she commissions new works that engage with knowledge production, the formation of community, and the legacies of collections and colonialism. She organizes contemporary art projects in the Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery and oversees exhibitions that draw from the collections of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Meg has organized exhibitions with artists Alia Farid, E.J. Hill, Eve Fowler, Wendy Jacob, Tomashi Jackson, Mary Lum, Gala Porras-Kim, Jill Slosburg-Ackerman and Maralyn Pappas, Xiveria Simmons, Anthony Romero, and Clarissa Tossin, among others. Subjects of archive exhibitions, curated by academics and library staff, have included the papers of Angela Y. Davis, the history of Roe vs. Wade, transnational feminism, and the Schlesinger’s collections of Asian American women and the diaspora.
Meg worked for a decade at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she connected artistic disciplines to research in science, technology, and the humanities. She created new artworks together with faculty, labs and centers through programs originating from the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the List Visual Art Center, the MIT program in Art, Culture and Technology, the Media Lab, and was a founding staff member of the Center for Art, Science and Technology. While at MIT she produced artworks with Mel Chin, Joan Jonas and Jason Moran, Fritz Haeg, Xavier Le Roy, Rick Lowe, John Malpede and Wendy Jacob, Trevor Paglen, Otto Piene, Tomas Saraceno, and Anika Yi among many others.
After attending art school, Meg founded and directed the non-profit Berwick Research Institute (2001-2009) with other area artists. Sited in Boston’s Nubian Square, Meg designed and oversaw collaborative residency programs for artists and curators in their early careers. She worked in partnership with other artists in producing projects across disciplines, initiated the Berwick’s public art incubator, organized publications, participated in the Bumpkin Island Encampment, and produced temporary public artworks and exhibitions across the city of Boston. Meg’s work in the arts was germinated at the Berwick where she initiated multivalent efforts in creating a place for and by artists—this effort continues to inspire Meg’s ethos as a cultural producer.
Meg is a frequent visiting artist, critic and lecturer, and serves on selection committees for local, national and international awards. Her artwork has been recently presented at Gallery VERY in Boston, the Providence College Galleries, Tufts University Art Galleries, the Boston Center for the Arts, the Modern Theater in Boston, and the Dixon Place Theater in New York. She has been an artist in residence at the Williams Collection in Welesley MA, the Substation in Boston MA, the Franz Masareel Centrum in Kasterlee Belgium, Smith College in Northampton MA, and the Queer Family House in New Hampshire. She is a recipient of grants and awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, the St. Botolft Foundation, the Boston Opportunity Fund, and has been awarded fellowships and merit scholarships for her education at Brown University, Tufts University, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Meg received a MA from Brown University in Public Humanities, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tufts University, and a Diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
Studio photography by Mel Taing, in process works photographed by the artist
All images copyright Meg Rotzel, 2026