Artist Biography
Tracy Krumm has exhibited, taught, and lectured extensively for over 35 years. Her work integrates hand-constructed metal textiles with harvested fibers, natural dyes and pigments, found objects, and forged steel to comment on labor, identity, environment, cultural production, and human connection. Krumm’s studio practice investigates the intersection of creative experience, simultaneous occurrence, and transformation. The manipulation of form through low tech and high tech processes, along with explorations in material studies and craft traditions, are at the core of her research.
Her work has been included in over 200 exhibitions, including the Triennial of Textiles, Lodz, Poland, the Cheongju Biennial, South Korea, the Betonac Prize, Sint Truiden, Belgium, Laced with History (2007) and Pins and Needles (2003-2004) Kohler Art Center, Sheboygen, WI, and Young Americans at the American Craft Museum (now MAD) in New York. In 2012, she was included in High Fiber and named a Woman to Watch by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Numerous publications, websites, and books have featured her work including The New York Times, Metalsmith, Sculpture, American Craft, Textile Forum, Surface Design Journal; Zone One Arts, Textile Curator 2017 and 2016; Textiles: The Art of Mankind, Mary Schoeser, Thames and Hudson, 2012, and CLOTH: 100 Artists- Contemporary Artists and Techniques, Lena Corwin, Abrams, 2025.
Krumm has received numerous grants and awards including a McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship (2015-2016), two MN State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants (2017 and 2019), and a number of residencies including the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe (Recycled Reseen: Folk Art from the Global Scrap Heap, 1996), Pentaculum ‘23 at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, TN, THREAD creative content studio in NE Minneapolis, and Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, MD. Two project grants from the International Folk Art Foundation in 2007 and 2008 allowed her to collaborate with nearly 1,000 community participants to complete Big Fiber: Human Tools, a series of four site-specific installations on Museum Hill in Santa Fe, NM. She has been nominated for both the USA Fellowship and Tiffany Biennial awards.
She has taught and lectured at over 20 institutions of higher and continuing education including the Kansas City Art Institute, North Carolina State University, Maine College of Art, University of WI- River Falls, Metro State (MN), University of Montana, California College of the Arts, Cranbrook Academy, The Witt Visiting Artist Program- University of Michigan, Memphis College of Art, San Jose State, UC Santa Cruz, Anderson Ranch, Haystack, Arrowmont, Appalachian Center for Craft, and Penland.
Selected collections include the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the Denver Art Museum, Corcoran Art Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art, The Ellen Noël Art Museum, Kansas State University, Bloomingdale's, Ford Motor Company, the Clorox Corporation, the US Embassy in Djibouti, and Four Seasons in Abu Dhabi.
Currently, she is Director for Artistic Advancement at Textile Center in Minneapolis where she curates and organizes exhibitions, consults on programming, and runs the McKnight Fellowships for Fiber Artists. She maintains a studio practice in St. Paul, MN.
