Alyssa Taylor Wendt has been collecting art and artifacts for over 35 years. She has a prolific and well-respected art career than spans twenty years. Currently an MLA candidate in Museum Studies at Harvard, she is getting her second master’s degree to better understand what a museum for our times should be. Having worked as an antiques dealer and curator, she is well versed in the history of precious and unusual objects and supports the narrative power of their historical value. She believes in the future of metro Detroit and is establishing the Museum for Cultural Artifacts to add to the cultural community of the city. This nonprofit organization will safeguard and house rare and special objects ranging from folk art and cultural iconography to pop memoriabilia, hand painted signs, fantasy coffins from Ghana and a rare book research library.
Currently, Miss Wendt works as a curator, filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. Her practice uses concepts of inherited memory, mysticism, the death cycle of architecture and history in video, sculpture, staged photographs, and performance. Earning her MFA from Bard, she has shown internationally since 2004 including: The Front Triennial, Ohio (2022), Women and Their Work, Austin (2015); Co-Lab Projects, Austin (2012, 2010); Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2011); TSA, Los Angeles (2018); Third Man Records, Detroit (2016); New Museum, NY (2011); Miami Art Basel (2008); Museum of Art and Design, NY (2013), Deitch Projects, NY (2005) and Fusebox Festival, Austin (2012). She is the recipient of several awards, including Official Winner of the International Istanbul Film Festival Award for H A I N T and T M I at Sigues du Nuit festival in Paris.