Beau Dunn

Beau Dunn was born Brittany Beau Dunn on June 10, 1987, in Los Angeles, California. She attended The Buckley School in Sherman Oaks before earning a bachelor's degree in studio art, with an emphasis in sculpture, from Pepperdine University in Malibu in 2010. Working across photography, sculpture, painting, and neon, she is best known for a "Plastic" series that recasts Barbie dolls and consumer packaging as commentary on globalized beauty ideals and celebrity culture.

Her first solo exhibition, "PLASTIC," opened at De Re Gallery in West Hollywood in 2016 and 2017, and she has since shown at Art Angels Gallery in Los Angeles and, internationally, at Maddox Gallery in London and Gstaad, Switzerland. Earlier group exhibitions include "eXist" at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art in Malibu in 2010 and a 2013 benefit exhibition, "Pieces of Heaven," staged by The Art of Elysium at the Ace Museum in Los Angeles. Dunn is a lead investor in Plastic Gallery, a Los Angeles contemporary art space where she presented the solo show "Next Generation: Need Money For.." with UNICEF USA in 2021.

Press profiles report that her work has been collected privately by figures including Kylie Jenner, Lily Collins, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Rebel Wilson, and Claudia Schiffer, though these are described as private acquisitions rather than institutional holdings. In interviews, including on The Skinny Confidential Him and Her podcast and in IVF Babble, Dunn has spoken about a cancer diagnosis and the health struggles that led her and her partner to have twins by surrogacy. She lives and works in Beverly Hills, California, and has described splitting time between the United States and New Zealand.

Coverage of Beau Dunn is concentrated in lifestyle, fashion, and entertainment outlets, such as Cosmopolitan, Galore, Please Magazine, and Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine, which frame her as a pop culture commentator on materialism, celebrity, and beauty standards through her Barbie and neon work. No verbatim, attributed assessment from a named art critic writing in a major art publication could be confirmed, so no critical quotation is included here. The available record points to a profile built through feature journalism and celebrity association rather than sustained coverage in the art press.

Public, verifiable secondary market data for Beau Dunn is thin. Her auction high is a lot titled "Top Down" that sold for USD 126,000 at Phillips's 20th Century and Contemporary Art Day Sale in New York on November 18, 2021; a separate source describes the sale at the same lot page as a set of six works titled "Glam Barbie #1 to 6," so the exact title of the winning lot is not fully settled even though the price, house, and date are documented. Press coverage of Kylie Jenner's home has cited an estimated 20,000 US dollar price for two Barbie portrait works, but that figure describes a reported private purchase, not an auction result, and cannot be treated as a market benchmark. Her commercial activity to date appears concentrated in primary market gallery sales, direct commissions, and benefit auctions rather than a developed secondary market.

There is no catalogue raisonne and no confirmed museum permanent collection holding for this artist as of this profile's data date; the exhibition at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art reflects exhibition history, not acquisition. The one located auction record, a Phillips New York lot that sold for USD 126,000 on November 18, 2021, is described inconsistently across sources, as "Top Down" in one account and as a six-work "Glam Barbie" lot in another, so the exact title should be treated with some caution even though the price and date are documented. Given the limited public market data, any valuation should rely on gallery and primary market channels and on direct verification with the artist's studio, with unusual caution around any private sale figures reported in the press.