Darren Waterston has been exhibiting his paintings, works on paper, and installations in the U.S. and abroad since the early 1990s. Recent exhibition highlights include: Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre: Whistler’s Peacock Room Reimagined at Victoria and Albert Museum (2020); Peacock Room REMIX: Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre at The Smithsonian Institution’s Freer/Sackler Galleries (2016); Uncertain Beauty at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2014); Forest Eater at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu (2011); and Splendid Grief: The Afterlife of Leland Stanford Jr. (2009), an installation at The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, CA.  

In 2027, Rizzoli will publish Darren Waterston: Filthy Lucre: Revised and Expanded Edition, authored by Susan Cross, Lee Glazer, and James Robinson. Other publications include Darren Waterston’s Filthy Lucre: Whistler’s Peacock Room Reimagined (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2020); Darren Waterston: Filthy Lucre (Skira Rizzoli in association with MASS MoCA and the Freer/Sackler, 2014); A Swarm, A Flock, a Host: A Compendium of Creatures, a collaboration between the artist and poet Mark Doty (Prestel, 2013); and Darren Waterston: Representing the Invisible (CHARTA, 2007). 

Waterston’s artwork is in numerous permanent collections including a site-specific mural at The Frick Collection, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; New York Public Library, New York City; The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

He graduated with a BFA from the Otis Art Institute in 1988, having previously studied at the Akademie der Künste and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, both in Germany.

Waterston currently lives and works in Kinderhook, New York.