Born in Abington, Pennsylvania in 1955, Polly Apfelbaum received a BFA in painting and printmaking from the Tyler School of Art in 1978 and currently lives and works in New York. Apfelbaum has been the subject of many solo exhibitions, including her most recent 2018-19 Waiting for the UFOs (a space set between a landscape and a bunch of flowers) at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO. A mid-career survey of her work was organized by the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA (2003) and subsequently traveled to the Kemper Museum and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH. Recent solo exhibitions have also been held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; Worcester Art Museum, MA; and the Mumbai Art Room, India. Apfelbaum has additionally participated in numerous significant group exhibitions since the mid-1980s including Sense and Sensibility: Women and Minimalism in the 90’s, MoMA (1994); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Art and Design, NY; and Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany.

Apfelbaum is the recipient of many awards and fellowships including the Rome Prize (2012), an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002), Joan Mitchell Fellowship (1999), Guggenheim Fellowship (1993), and the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (1987). Her work can be found in many public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; and Dallas Museum of Art, TX. Apfelbaum is represented by Alexander Gray Associates in New York and Frith Street Gallery in London.