my research focuses on issues of race and ethnicity in modern and contemporary art.
I’m an art historian, curator, and critic based in Rochester, New York, and am invested in institutional change toward a more inclusive future. Currently, I am Assistant Professor of Art History at Rochester Institute of Technology. I received my PhD from Stanford University in 2015 from the Department of Art & Art History, and my research focuses on issues of race and ethnicity in modern and contemporary art, drawing heavily on ideas central to conceptual art, black studies and feminist thought. My current line of questioning explores the topic of black conceptualism, rooted in the generative friction and theoretical potential between black studies and art history as disciplines of creative thought. I am currently developing a book manuscript on the conceptual artist Charles Gaines.
I’m interested in artists who ask questions – namely, those who critically question American identity and culture in ever expansive and generative directions. I study the art made by African American, Asian American, Latinx, Indigenous, and other diasporic cultures with a critical race studies methodology, uniting my training in American art and Contemporary art history. My teaching prioritizes accessible course design, object-based pedagogy, and experiential learning, and incorporates perspectives from feminist and queer theory, postcolonial and ethnic studies, and disability studies. Living artists and their ideas are the center of my research and curatorial work; I respect them, enjoy thinking alongside them, and love learning from them.
In my curatorial work, both independently and institutionally, I explore the new and re-examine the old through the lens of the present. My formative curatorial training happened in the academic art museum, and I carry that mission-driven model with me in both the curatorial frameworks I devise and in my collaborations with faculty, curatorial colleagues, artists, and students on exhibition projects.
I write in scholarly and critical modes across numerous exhibition catalogs and edited volumes; academic journals such as Art Journal, ASAP/J, American Quarterly, and Panorama; and the publications Artforum, Art in America, and caa.reviews.
The latest:
I received an Arts Writers grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts in support of my book manuscript, Charles Gaines: Black Conceptualism and the Poetics of Systems.
academia.edu – used to be, but is no longer a good place for academics and our intellectual property.