School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Faculty Member, Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Goldabelle McComb Finn Professor of Art History

About

My research critically engages with the narratives of modern art from the perspectives of derided or ignored alternatives — sculpture, "academic" art, queer sexualities, transforming genders, camp, and non-seriousness.  I focus on the history of modern sculpture from its nineteenth-century origins to its legacies in contemporary art practice, and my current projects deal with the gendering of studio practice and the changing status of the human figure in modern and contemporary art. 

From my work on nineteenth-century sculptors such as Auguste Rodin to my research on contemporary art and performance, a central concern has been the ways in which artists have used sexuality as a resource in their development of public modes of practice, pluralistic accounts of sociality, and accessible artistic vocabularies.

Further specific areas of interest include: queer theories, transgender theories, and feminisms in art-historical methodology; sculptural materiality and its interference or amplification of representation; modern European sculpture and the figurative tradition; "academic" art's relation to modernity; exchanges between poetry and sculpture; the transgender capacity of abstract art; the study of games and play in art and art history; virtual reality and immersive art; internet art and activism; and public practice.

I am currently completing a book tentatively titled,
'Abstract Bodies in American Sculpture, 1962-1976'

and editing a collection of artist's writings due out in Fall 2012:
'Possible Impermanence: Scott Burton's Critical Writings on Art and Performance, 1966-74' (Soberscove Press, forthcoming 2012)

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