Amy Dempsey

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Amy Dempsey
Born22 December 1963
Alma mater
Occupation
Academic career
Thesis The friendship of America and France: A new internationalism, 1961–1965
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Amy Jo Dempsey FRSA (born 1963) is an independent scholar and art historian based in London. Her book Styles, Schools and Movements (2002) has seen twenty-eight editions, including a revised and expanded edition in 2010, and is available in fifteen languages.

Contents

Early life

Amy Dempsey was born in Minneapolis, MN on 22 December 1963. She lived in 17 different places in the United States before the age of 10. [1] She studied at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA and at Hunter College in New York under Rosalind Krauss before receiving her PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London on the subject of The Friendship of America and France: A New Internationalism, 1961–1965. [2] Dempsey’s early career in the arts included working at commercial galleries in Washington D.C and New York and writing for various museums in London when she moved there in the 1990s, including Tate, Victoria & Albert and National Maritime Museum.

Writing

Dempsey's first art history book was Styles, Schools & Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art, published by Thames & Hudson in 2002, which was translated into fourteen languages other than English. A second expanded edition was published in 2010. [3] [4] A new, updated, expanded version will be published in 2027.

In 2006 she published the first book on ‘Destination Art’, coining the phrase in order to provide a framework with which to present, discuss and promote artworks in which location is an integral ingredient, as is the journey to find them. Destination Art (2006) saw eight editions, including a revised and expanded edition in 2011, and was available in five languages. [5] [6] [7]

Dempsey is also the author of three titles in Thames & Hudson’s Art Essential series: Modern Art (2018, sixteen editions, fourteen languages), Surrealism (2019, thirteen editions, eleven languages) and Destination Art (2021, five editions, three languages).

In 2026, Dempsey’s book The Female Body in Art was published by Laurence King and translated into German, Spanish and Japanese.

She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ "Swimming – Land Art – Sicily". Excess Baggage , BBC Radio 4, 14 January 2012. (10m, 23s) Retrieved 21 May 2017.
  2. ↑ The friendship of America and France : a new internationalism, 1961–1965. University of London. Retrieved 21 May 2017.
  3. ↑ Styles, schools and movements. Destination Art. Retrieved 21 May 2017.
  4. ↑ Styles, Schools and Movements. Thames & Hudson. Archived at archive.org 14 January 2016. Retrieved 21 May 2017.
  5. ↑ Review: Destination Art by Amy Dempsey; Topographies by John Sallis, Review by Glenn Parsons, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Vol. 66, No. 3 (Summer, 2008), pp. 321–323.
  6. ↑ Destination Art. Retrieved 21 May 2017.
  7. ↑ Destination Art. Review by Michael S. Gant. metroactive, 24–30 January 2007. Retrieved 21 May 2017.


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