Fried has participated in numerous group exhibitions including the 1977, 1979, 1981, and 1983 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; documenta V, Kassel Germany; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco; the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco.
Fried has held solo exhibitions at the de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum, University of Santa Clara, California; Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; and/or, Seattle, Washington; the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley; and apexart, New York, among others. A mid-career retrospective was organized at Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley in 1983.
Selected works
The Seven States of Openness (1969–70) – installation, objects, drawings, text
White, Robin. Interview with Howard Fried at Crown Point Press, ‘’View’’. Oakland, California: Crown Point Press, 1979.[12]
Roth, Moira. "A Star is Born: Performance Art in California," Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1980.[13]
Foley, Suzanne. Space Time Sound, Conceptual Art in the San Francisco Bay Area: The 1970s. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1981. ISBN0-295-95879-0
Lewallen, Constance. Howard Fried: Works from 1969 to 1983. Berkeley: University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, 1983.
Albright, Thomas. Art of the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945 - 1980. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. ISBN0-520-05193-9, ISBN978-0-520-05193-5
University of Massachusetts Amherst, University Gallery. In site: five conceptual artists from the Bay Area: Terry Fox, Howard Fried, David Ireland, Paul Kos, Tom Marioni: University Gallery, Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst, February 2 March 17, 1990. Amherst: University Gallery, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1990.
Hall, Doug, Sally Jo Fifer, ed. Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art. New York: Aperture Foundation/BAVC, 1991. ISBN978-0-89381-390-1
Schimmel, Paul, author. Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1998. ISBN0500280509
Verigne, Lea, ed. Body Art and Performance: The Body As Language. Skira Editore S. p. A., Milan, 2000. ISBN978-88-8118-689-1
Fried, Howard. "Structuring Inside the Harlequin; Watershed; Patternmaker," New Observations, (Fall/Winter 2000)
Montano, Linda. Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.ISBN978-0520210226
Phillips, Glenn, ed. California Video: Artists and Histories. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008, ISBN978-0-89236-922-5
Bishop, Janet, Corey Keller, and Sarah Roberts, eds. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 75 Years of Looking Forward. San Francisco: SFMOMA. ISBN978-0-918471-84-0
Anker, Steve, Kathy Geritz, and Steve Seid, eds. Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000 University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2010. ISBN978-0-520-24911-0
Hoffmann, Jens and Paul McCarthy, eds. Paul McCarthy's Low Life, Slow Life, Hatje Cantz, 2010. ISBN3-7757-2573-3
Schimmel, Paul and Lisa Gabrielle Mark, eds. Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981, Prestel USA, 2011. ISBN3-7913-5139-7
Lewallen, Constance, Karen Moss, Julia Bryan-Wilson, and Anne Rorimer. State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970, University of California Press, 2011. ISBN0-520-27061-4