Born in 1950, Robert Taplin earned a B.A. in Medieval Studies from Pomona College in Claremont, CA in 1973. He began creating artwork in the mid-1970's and exhibiting soon after. He has exhibited throughout the country with solo exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA), Grounds for Sculpture (Hamilton, NJ), the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT), the Ezra and Cecile Zilka Gallery at Wesleyan University (Middletown CT), the Smack Mellon Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) and Winston Wachter Fine Arts (New York, NY). He has executed Public Commissions for the State of Connecticut and the New York MTA and received grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His work has been featured in publications such as ARTnews, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He has taught at a variety of institutions including Yale University Art School and the Rhode Island School of Design. His work is currently in the exhibition Suffering from Realness at MASSMOCA in North Adams, MA. An upcoming solo exhibition of his series Everything Imagined is Real (After Dante) and a new group of works Here and There will open at the Harnett Museum at the University of Richmond in the fall of 2019.