Michael Aurbach is an artist-educator who teaches sculpture and drawing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. His socially inspired works have been exhibited at universities, museums, and galleries throughout the United States. For nearly two decades Aurbach's work addressed issues related to death, identity, and the plight of socially disenfranchised groups. His recent work is about secrecy and institutional behavior.

He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Southern Arts Federation, the Tennessee Arts Commission, Art Matters Inc., the Puffin Foundation Ltd., and Vanderbilt University are among the institutions and foundations that have provided support for his work. In 1995 Aurbach was honored with the Southeastern College Art Conference Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement.

Since 1986 there have been more than sixty solo exhibitions of his work. The Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in New York, the Indianapolis Art Center, the Artemisia Gallery in Chicago, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Kansas are among the institutions that have hosted one-person shows. In 2001 Aurbach was honored with the inaugural exhibition of contemporary art at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. He has lectured at more than two-hundred colleges, museums, and art institutions.

Aurbach recently completed his term as president of the College Art Association. He is in the process of coordinating the 2006 joint conference of the Southeastern College Art Conference and the Mid-America College Art Association. Through CAA he has been actively involved with the development of professional guidelines and standards for artists, art historians, and museum professionals. For many years he coordinated CAA's annual conference mentoring program known as the Career Development Workshop.