Alyssa Taylor Wendt has been collecting art and artifacts for over 35 years. She has a prolific and well-respected art career than spans over twenty-five years. She recently earned an MLA in Museum Studies from Harvard to better understand what a museum for our times should look like. 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 museums and is establishing the Museum for Cultural Artifacts to add to the global dialogue about non-monetary value, underrepresenting histories, and the numinous energy of objects. 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 New York. Her practice uses concepts of inherited memory, mysticism, the death cycle of architecture and history in video, sculpture, staged photographs, and performance. Earning her first 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.