Norm Magnusson
Norm Magnusson has a performance and art career spanning over 35 years. He’s in the permanent collection of NY’s MoMA, The Museum of the City of New York, The Dorsky Museum, The New-York Historical Society, and The Anchorage Museum of History and Art amongst many other corporate and private collections. He’s received numerous awards and grants including two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, A NYFA Fellowship, two NYSCA grants, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant and the Ulster County Award for Art in Public Places amongst many others. As a visual artist, he’s shown in galleries and museums in New York, New Zealand, London, Paris and all over the U.S. He’s been reviewed everywhere from the NY Times to the Washington Post to the Utne Reader, Sculpture Magazine, TrendHunter.com and many other national and international magazines, websites and blogs. As a curator, he’s brought together exhibitions such as “FU”, which examined and illustrated U.S. fair use laws as they pertain to visual artists; “The Museum of Controversial Art”, which re-created some of the most controversial art through the ages; “Beautiful Nonsense”, which consists of objects and art meant to challenge the intellectual sure-footedness with which we move through our everyday lives, “abc@WFG”, a survey of text-based art; and “Abstract Evocative”, an exhibition of abstract art at WAAM in Woodstock. As an educator, he’s taught art to under-privileged kids in NYC and over-privileged kids in Woodstock, NY, where he created a 12-class curriculum entitled “Art that’s Changed the Way I See the World Around Me” in which artists and gallerists and rock stars and film makers and authors and academics came and spoke on that topic with visual and audio aids. Most recently, he launched a new curriculum of appreciating and creating land-based art for 5th grade students. For the last 12 years, on August 29, the date of its world premier in Woodstock, NY, Magnusson has produced an anniversary concert of John Cage’s 4’33” at the WAAM Museum in that town, a concert series originated to commemorate that town’s role in debuting this amazing piece of art. A decade ago, he returned to his first creative love, acting; starring in productions of plays by David Mamet and David Ives, and as Pozzo in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” He performed in the The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck’s production of Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer” and, most recently, as George in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” He has also appeared in numerous feature films, mostly playing a shrink or a professor. In 2013, he wrote his first ever words and images monologue “The Signs in our Lives” and performed it at the Hudson Literary Festival in 2014 and 2015. It was followed by the monologues “Swipe Right (Looking for Love in the Digital Era)” in 2017, and “Kill the Head (Losing my Self in a Zombie Movie)”, about his months working as a stand in and photo double for Bill Murray. In 2021, he wrote and performed “The Definition of Pornography”, which debuted at 11 Jane Street Art and Performance Space concurrent with his “PORNWEAVINGSEXHIBITION” of visual art. 2022 found him performing the acclaimed “Norm’s Memory Sale” at various galleries and performance spaces in the Hudson Valley. 2024 brought his debut to “The Porch”, a “Moth”-like live storytelling event. He’s the co-founder of FISHtheMOUSEmedia, a developer of educational apps for iOS, where his “Animal Alphabet” app was widely acclaimed and honored with a prestigious Gold award from the Parents’ Choice Foundation. He serves on the board of directors of two 501(c)3 organizations, CultureConnect and GoodJTDeeds and is the father of 3 wonderful kids, all of whom are especially talented at seeing the world around them with appreciative eyes and a grateful heart.
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