RIP – Lawrence Weiner – Conceptual, Language Artist
At Whitney 
In Memoriam: Lawrence Weiner
Our fellow artist and dear friend, Lawrence Weiner, has passed at the age of 79. A force of conceptual art, Lawrence gained international recognition for the use of language as his primary medium. He proposed a new relationship to art and redefined the position of the artist, and his works demonstrated the power of language worldwide.
“I am heartbroken.” —Marian Goodman
Lawrence Weiner, a towering figure in the Conceptual art movement arising in the 1960s and who profoundly altered the landscape of American art, died December 2 at the age of seventy-nine. Known for his text-based installations incorporating evocative or descriptive phrases and sentence fragments, typically presented in bold capital letters accompanied by graphic accents and occupying unusual sites and surfaces, Weiner rose to prominence among a cohort that included Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, and Sol LeWitt. A firm believer that an idea alone could constitute an artwork, he established a practice that stood out for its consistent embodiment of his famous 1968 “Declaration of Intent”: