The character arc of Julie Mehretu
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born 28 November 1970 in Addis Ababa, the daughter of an Ethiopian geography professor and an American Montessori teacher. Between then and now sit a flight from Ethiopia in 1977 as the country came apart, a childhood in East Lansing, Michigan, a year studying in Dakar, a master's at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997, a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005, and an auction record for an African artist in 2023. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Julie Mehretu?
They left the country in a hurry, and she paints how places move.
She was born in Addis Ababa in 1970. Her father taught geography at the university there and her mother, an American, taught Montessori. In 1977 the family left, as Ethiopia came apart politically, and settled in East Lansing, Michigan, where her father took a post at Michigan State in economic geography. She was six. It is not a small thing that the parent in the house studied how places are arranged and what happens to the people in them.
She went to Kalamazoo College, spent her junior year at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, and took her master's at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Then, instead of going straight to New York, she took a place on the CORE programme at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, which gave her a studio, a stipend and a show. That is the unglamorous version of a first step and it is where the work got built.
Her paintings are enormous and layered: architectural plans, city maps, stadium diagrams and weather systems drawn over each other and then marked into, so what you see is less a place than the movement through one. A MacArthur Fellowship came in 2005. In 2007 Goldman Sachs commissioned a five million dollar lobby mural the size of a tennis court. The Whitney gave her a full floor retrospective in 2021, and in October 2023 an early painting sold for 9.32 million dollars, an auction record for an African artist, a category she is routinely put in and which says more about the market than the work. In 2024 she made a BMW art car and an eighty five foot glass window for the Obama Presidential Center, and gave more than two million dollars to let under twenty fives into the Whitney free. Her line is worth reading because the subject of it is displacement, drawn by somebody it happened to at six.
The moments
Julie Mehretu's timeline.
The 1970s
The family left Ethiopia
Setback, and it changed everything. Six years old, out of the country as it came apart, into a Michigan college town.
The 1990s
A year in Dakar
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Back to the continent she had been taken out of, as a student, on her own terms.
An MFA at RISD
Milestone. The qualification, and the point at which most artists find out how hard the next part is.
Straight to New York, or Houston
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: take the Houston residency, taken, or move to New York immediately. The Houston year produced the work that started the career, and the MacArthur Fellowship followed in 2005.
A studio, and a stipend
Milestone, and it changed everything. Not New York. Houston, a room to work in and enough money to eat, which is what actually lets the work happen.
The 2000s
A MacArthur Fellowship
Milestone, and it changed everything. The award with no conditions attached, at thirty four.
A tennis court of painting
Milestone, and it changed everything. A commission of that size changes what an artist can physically attempt.
The 2020s
A Whitney retrospective
Milestone, and it changed everything. A whole floor of the Whitney, at fifty.
The record for African art
Milestone, and it changed everything. A record in a category she is routinely filed under, which says more about the market than about the painting.
A BMW, and a window
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A car and a window, neither of which is a canvas, both of which are hers.
Two million to the Whitney
Milestone. She paid for a generation of young people to get into the museum that gave her the floor.
First show in Australia
Milestone. A fourth continent, fifty four years in.
The line reaches today still adding to itself, which is why it is drawn now rather than at the end. What it has set moving hangs in a bank lobby, a presidential centre and a museum floor, and it all comes out of a six year old leaving Addis Ababa in a hurry.
Your turn
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Hers began with a family leaving a country quickly, and became a career about exactly that. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Julie Mehretu: frequently asked questions
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Sources
- Julie Mehretu, English Wikipedia biography.
- MacArthur Foundation, 2005 Fellows.
- Whitney Museum of American Art, Julie Mehretu retrospective, 2021.