Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of Conceptual art and installation art, initiating language-based works and appropriation strategies in the 1960s. His work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art. His more than half-a-century-long inquiry into the relation of language to art has taken the form of installations, museum exhibitions, public commissions and publications throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia, having participated in seven documentas and eight Venice Biennali, in one of which he presented in the Hungarian Pavilion, Zeno at the Edge of Known World (1993).


He received a Cassandra Foundation Grant in 1968. His other awards include the Brandeis Award (1990), Frederick Wiseman Award (1991), the Menzione d’Onore at the Venice Biennale (1993), Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 1993), Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich (Austria, 2003), Wen Xin Award (Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, 2019), Grand Prix for Lifetime Achievement from Osten Biennial (2022), Medal of Honor from the National Arts Club, New York (2022); additionally Laurea in Honoris Causa from University of Bologna in Philosophy, Doctorate in Honoris Causa from Instituto Superior de Arte Havana (2015) (2001), and Laurea in Honoris Causa from Albertini Academy, Torino in Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts (2025).


Permanent and public projects include Material of Ornament (Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, 1997; permanent 2020) Ni Apparence Ni Illusion (Louvre, 2009; permanent 2014), Causa Sui (Council of State, The Hague, 2011), W.F.T (San Francisco Civic Auditorium, 2016), Inventing Relations (Ca’ Foscari University, Venice 2016), One Field to the Next (Taipei Main Station, 2018), La Signification (Magritte Museum, Brussels, 2019), and Located World (Miami Beach Convention Center, 2019).


Born in Toledo, Ohio, Kosuth studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art (1963–64), School of Visual Arts, New York (1965–67), and New School for Social Research (1971–72). He has taught at the School of Visual Arts (1967–85), Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg (1988–90), Staatliche Akademie der Bildende Künste Stuttgart (1991–97), Kunstakademie Munich (2001–06), and IUAV Venice (2001–08, 2023). He has been Visiting Professor and Guest Lecturer at Yale, Cornell, NYU, UCLA, Oxford, the Sorbonne, and numerous other institutions. He currently lives and works in New York and Venice.