Dan Peterman is an internationally known artist who is recognized for his work with ecologically themed installation art

Installation art

Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

. Additionally, he is employed as a professor of art at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Work

Peterman's work is an example of adaptive reuse

Adaptive reuse

Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an old site or building for a purpose other than which it was built or designed for. Along with brownfield reclamation, adaptive reuse is seen by many as a key factor in land conservation and the reduction of urban sprawl...

 though he was practicing it long before it had an official title. Peterman takes existing objects and manipulates them to show their original purpose while exposing the possibility for newness. His work explores the "intersection of art and ecology" and he "embraces a wide variety of formal and situational strategies, and employs a range of materials including recycled plastic and metals, as well as organic and post consumer waste."

Though Peterman usually exhibits his work in museums and at art galleries, he is known for displaying his art for the general public. The most known example is his running table, a 100 foot-long picnic table

Picnic table

A picnic table is a modified table with attached benches, designed for eating a meal outdoors .-Uses:...

 located in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

's Millennium Park

Millennium Park

Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, USA and originally intended to celebrate the millennium. It is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a section of northwestern Grant Park. The area was previously...

. The table "considers issues around consumption and recycling" and is "made from the equivalent of two million recycled milk bottles."

Reviews

• Frieze Magazine
  Frieze (magazine)
  -Publication:frieze is published eight times a year and is based in London. As well as essays, exhibition reviews and columns by forward-thinking writers, artists, critics and curators, the magazine includes music reviews, artist projects, interviews and sections on design and...
  
  : "Situated within the contradictions that damn and glorify public space, Peterman’s work takes on a class-crossing potential, in addition to its material ironies, that it could not achieve in a more circumscribed art space."

• Klosterfelde Gallery: "In using human waste for his sculpture work or installed environments he reveals the interrelated social, economic and political effects of our generation of waste."

• Museum of Contemporary Art
  Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
  
  : "'Environmental' is the lazy way of describing Dan Peterman's work. While his art is about resource recovery-he incorporates recycled materials into his projects-it's also alchemical, sociological, and activist."

Notable Exhibitions

• Liechtenstein Art Museum
• Smart Museum of Art
  Smart Museum of Art
  The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The permanent collection of over 10,000 objects includes works by Francisco Goya, Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Diego...
  
  
• Baltimore Museum of Art
  Baltimore Museum of Art
  The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
  
  
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues...
  
  
• Gothenburg Museum of Art
  Gothenburg Museum of Art
  The Göteborg Museum of Art at Götaplatsen, Gothenburg, is renowned for its collection of Nordic art from around the close of the 19th century. A must see is the lavishly decorated Fürstenberg Gallery, named after a leading Gothenburg art donor, Pontus Fürstenberg and his wife Göthilda. Among the...
  
  
• Abteiberg Museum
  Abteiberg Museum
  The Museum Abteiberg is a municipal museum for contemporary art in the German city Mönchengladbach.Since the 1970s, the museum has been known for its experimental and avant-garde exhibitions, starting with director Johannes Cladders , and also its museum architecture, designed by Austrian architect...
  
  
• National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
  National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
  The is an art museum in Kyoto, Japan.This Kyoto museum is also known by the English acronym MoMAK .-MoMAK history:...
  
  

Notable Awards

• Richard Driehaus
  Richard Driehaus
  Richard H. Driehaus is a fund manager, businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of Driehaus Capital Management, based in Chicago, a firm which manages US$10 billion...
  
   Foundation award

• Lewis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award

• UIC University Scholar Award