Catalogues and Exhibition Texts — click thumbnails to read

Anaïs Duplan, Hope Ginsburg, Melody Jue, Jennifer Lange

Meditation Ocean (gallery guide)

Wexner Center for the Arts, 2023

Sarah Howard

"Sponge Exchange, Hope Ginsburg" (exhibition text)

University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 2020

Denise Markonish
"Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder" (excerpt from catalog essay)
MASS MoCA, 2016
pp. 50–51

Jennifer Lange
"Land Dive Team: Bay of Fundy" (exhibition text)
THE BOX, Wexner Center for the Arts, 2016

Sarah Demeuse
"Weather Permitting" (catalog entry)
9th Mercosul Biennial, 2013
pp. 308–311

Regine Basha
"Hope Ginsburg" (catalog essay)
CUE Art Foundation, 2011
pp. 6–7

Emily Sessions
"Hope Ginsburg" (catalog essay)
CUE Art Foundation, 2011
pp. 21–25

Jennifer Kollar
"Factory Direct: New Haven" (catalog entry)
Artspace, 2005

Helen Molesworth
"Work Ethic" (catalog entry)
Baltimore Museum of Art, 2003
pp. 147–148

Larissa Harris
"Heart of Gold" (excerpt from catalog essay)
PS1, 2002
pp. 3–5

Omer Fast
"Fido Television" (excerpt from catalog essay)
Hunter College Times Square Art Gallery, 2000

Articles and Reviews — click thumbnails to read

Annie Dell'Aria

"Deep Breathing: Annie Dell'Aria on Meditation Ocean"

Artforum, May 2023

Pablo Helguera

"Reading Assignments: Books that artists study, reference, and base works on."

Beautiful Eccentrics

August 18, 2022

Lynn Trimble

"New Generation of Land Artists Embodies a Call for Action"

Hyperallergic

July 14, 2022


Jennifer Lange

Film/Video Studio Journals: Hope Ginsburg

In Practice, Wexner Center for the Arts

Fall 2021

Emma Colón
"5 Artists Bridging Communities Across Difference"
A Blade of Grass Magazine
March 28, 2019

Leila Ugincius
"Optimistic and Tragic: A Glimpse of Coral Restoration"
VCU News
March 26, 2019

Sydney Cologie and Brynne McGregor
"Wex Moments 2018: Film/Video Studio artist Hope Ginsburg" (Q&A)
Wexner Center for the Arts
December 26, 2018

Tim Dodson
"Performative Diving Piece Featured at Festival Honoring the James River"
Richmond Times-Dispatch
June 9, 2018

Karen Newton
"Deep Dive: Artist Hope Ginsburg Becomes One with the Sea"
Style Weekly, June 2018

Jessica Lynne
"From Climate Change to Race Relations, Artists Respond to Richmond, VA" (review)
Hyperallergic, 2015

Lauren O'Neill-Butler
"Hope Ginsburg CUE Art Foundation" (review)
Artforum, Summer 2011

Gary Robertson

"Art Students Find Inspiration in the Lab"

VCU News Center, 2010

T.J. Demos
"Work Ethic" (review)
Artforum, February 2004

Books — click thumbnails to read

Sarah Urist Green

"You Are An Artist: Assignments to Spark Creation"

Penguin Books, 2020

pp. 239–232

Corina L. Apostol and Nato Thompson, Editors

"Making Another World Possible: 10 Creative Time Summits, 10 Global Issues, 100 Art Projects"

Routledge, 2020

pp. 277–278

Akiko Busch

"How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency"

Penguin Books, 2019

pp. 199–200

Educational Materials — click thumbnails to read

Amanda Tobin Ripley and Julia Harth

Winter / Spring 2023 Learning Guide

Wexner Center for the Arts, 2023

Videos — click thumbnails to view

VCUarts Lecture Series: Hope Ginsburg

Institute for Contemporary Art

Richmond, VA 

October 3, 2023

Land Dive Team: Amphibious James

Television Program is a Production of VPM

Producer/Director: Mason Mills

Producer/Field Director: Allison Benedict

September 22, 2019

Conjure a Studio – Hope Ginsburg
The Art Assignment
PBS Digital Studios, 2016

The Art of Pedagogy – Hope Ginsburg

Creative Time Summit

Venice Biennale, 2015

Art and Education in the 21st Century
Panelists: John Brown-Executive Director, Windgate Foundation; Tom Finkelpearl-Commissioner, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; Hope Ginsburg-Artist and Educator; Moderator: Geoffrey Cowan- President, The Annenberg Foundation Trust
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 2014

Hope Ginsburg’s ongoing work Sponge takes its title not from the cellulose rectangles found on supermarket shelves but from the marine animal, which, with its porosity, adaptability (its cells can repurpose themselves), and ability to attach itself to a variety of hosts, embodies many of the qualities of her enterprise. Headquartered at Virginia Commonwealth University (where Ginsburg teaches), Sponge knits together aesthetics and pedagogy, taking the form of workshops, classes, performances, and more, on subjects ranging from felt making to oceanographic robotics, and drawing influence from the philosophies of educators such as John Dewey and Paulo Freire. However, in a manner fairly reminiscent of the experiments of the UK’s Artist Placement Group, Ginsburg is ultimately concerned with the possibilities (formal and, indeed sculptural) generated by the seamless integration of practice and context. For example, when she worked at a textile firm that had developed sustainable fabric that could be used as mulch, she made an oversize wooden compost bin wherein worms could be seen busily digesting the product; in a group show at MoMA PS1, the bin functioned as a sculpture, while in the firm’s showroom it was a marketing display. Now that the context has changed, her work has followed suit.


In recent years, Ginsburg’s Sponge has seemed more like a nautilus’s spiraling shell. In 2008, Solvent Space in Richmond, Virginia, hosted “Meta-Sponge,” whose aim was to give participants the tools to start similar initiatives of their own. In early 2009, at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Ginsburg hosted “Center Sponge,” a five-day “experience in total immersion,” involving ukulele lessons, field trips to an aquarium and a planetarium, and presentations by a musician (Mirah), a curator (Larissa Harris), and an engineer (David Mindell), among others. To counter the intimate you-had-to-be-there-ness of the project, Ginsburg produced several colorful prints with designer David Reinfurt (of Dexter Sinister), each outlining the various details of the sundry events associated with each presentation of Sponge and emphasizing its collaborative and protean nature.


I first saw the prints in the summer of 2009 at Socrates Sculpture Park, where Ginsburg had set up shop, literally. Titled Makers Market, the weekend-long project involved a presentation of the scrolls and vibrant handmade felt mittens and booties for sale (her position as a merchant was a far cry from her QVC Project, 1996-97, a work that documents her failed attempt to become a host on that cable-shopping network). Ginsburg’s recent exhibition at Cue (curated by Regine Basha) featured a similar installation, and the show activated the rest of the gallery by resurrecting other Sponge presentations from the past five years—a trippy mural of sea sponges from the Solvent Space show, another mural of a design created by participants in “Colablablab” (“an experiment in curricular ecology” in which Ginsburg and her students enrolled in a VCU biology lab and studied together, their experiences complemented by a book produced by the students). Installed on another wall was a felt-and-metal-covered pencil sharpener dedicated to Sol LeWitt, a prominent champion of collaboration. While all of this provided traces of the learning situations that interest Ginsburg, one wishes the show had offered a fuller picture of her larger endeavor.


Although this exhibition was not in itself participatory, Ginsburg has effectively advanced and promoted the potential of collaboration—within and outside the art world. And yet, she is an artist who remains interested in visual, tactile art objects. One of the most intriguing aspects of her practice is her investigation of the way in which such objects are exchanged and circulated. In the process, she explores how art might represent something, or a multiplicity of things, within the range of contexts—economic, social, historical—that every entity, whether pencil sharpener, sea sponge, or human being, must necessarily negotiate.

Lauren O'Neill-Butler
"Hope Ginsburg CUE Art Foundation" (review)
Artforum, Summer 2011