Elaine Reichek (b. USA) is a conceptual artist who uses many different media to examine beliefs and preconceptions about aesthetics and culture. She investigates images, texts and objects seeking out stories that she can retell through her work. Reichek has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus, OH, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Belgium, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland, and Tel Aviv Art Museum, Israel. Reichek received her BFA from Yale University and her BA from Brooklyn College. She lives and works in New York.

Initially Elaine Reichek's time at the Gardner in 2000 was spent researching for her "Adam and Eve" cycle, which included sixteen embroideries recounting the creation myth from the Genesis to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Reichek researched the collection, culling images to add to her resources. Ultimately she used an illustration for Genesis 1:1-3 from "The Beginning of Creation", from Histoire des Ouden en Nieuwen Testaments 1700, an illustrated Bible by Pieter Mortier for a new work entitled Sampler (Perhaps No Life). The artist came back in 2002 and 2003 and produced madamimadam, a virtual exhibition of her work installed throughout the galleries of the Museum. While the museum was closed to the public, Reichek briefly placed her work into the permanent collection and documented it on film. Working with two graduate students from Massachusetts College of Art, she mixed the films, audio and text. This interactive exhibition was launched on the museum's website as part of the 2003 Boston CyberArts Festival and later published in CD-Rom format. During her residency, Elaine Reichek also hosted a sewing circle and spoke about her work in an Eye of the Beholder Lecture. She returned in 2010 for a Room Views conversation about the Dutch Room at the 20th anniversary of the museum's theft with Curator of Contemporary Art Pieranna Cavalchini and Curator of the Collection Alan Chong.

madamimadam CD-ROM