Janet Dees

Last updated

Janet Dees is an American curator who is the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art. [1] [2] She is also an art historian and expert on African, African-American, and Spanish colonial art, having researched and taught the subjects in positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and the Brooklyn Museum. [3]

Dees received a BA in art history and African and African American studies from Fordham University and a MA in art history from the University of Delaware. Prior to her graduate studies, she worked as a museum educator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the African Burial Ground National Monument as well as assistant director for a contemporary art gallery in New York. [4]

Before joining the Block Museum of Art in September 2015, Dees held various curatorial positions at SITE Santa Fe beginning in 2008, and was a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, where she specialized in 18th–20th century American art history. At SITE, she was part of a four-member team that organized a Pan-American exhibition series on contemporary art named "SITElines: New Perspectives on the Art of the Americas". For SITE's twentieth anniversary, she helped to organize a series of projects featuring SITE's previous artists. Her work has been featured in publications of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, Radius Books, and SITE. Contemporary artists she has curated for include Janine Antoni, Gregory Crewdson, Amy Cutler, Ann Hamilton, Linda Montano, Sarah Oppenheimer and Rose B. Simpson. [2] [3] [5]

Dees received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for the fall of 2018, which was awarded to support new scholarship on contemporary artistic practice. [6]

Related Research Articles

Lowery Stokes Sims is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists such as Wifredo Lam, Fritz Scholder, Romare Bearden, Joyce J. Scott and others. She served on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She has frequently served as a guest curator, lectured internationally and published extensively, and has received many public appointments. Sims was featured in the 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution.

Henry Geldzahler was a Belgian-born American curator of contemporary art in the late 20th century, as well as a historian and critic of modern art. He is best known for his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as New York City Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, and for his social role in the art world with a close relationship with contemporary artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurice Berger</span> American cultural historian, curator, and art critic (1956 - 2020)

Maurice Berger was an American cultural historian, curator, and art critic, who served as a Research Professor and Chief Curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Berger was recognized for his interdisciplinary scholarship on race and visual culture in the United States.

ART PAPERS is an Atlanta-based bimonthly art magazine and non-profit organization dedicated to the examination of art and culture in the world today. Its mission is to provide an independent and accessible forum for the exchange of perspectives on the role of contemporary art as a socially relevant and engaged discourse. This mission is implemented through the publication of ART PAPERS magazine and the presentation of public programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Betty Woodman</span> American ceramic artist

Elizabeth Woodman was an American ceramic artist.

Deborah Kass is an American artist whose work explores the intersection of pop culture, art history, and the construction of self. Deborah Kass works in mixed media, and is most recognized for her paintings, prints, photography, sculptures and neon lighting installations. Kass's early work mimics and reworks signature styles of iconic male artists of the 20th century including Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Ed Ruscha. Kass's technique of appropriation is a critical commentary on the intersection of social power relations, identity politics, and the historically dominant position of male artists in the art world.

Nada M. Shabout is an American art historian specializing in modern Iraqi art. She has been a professor of art history at the University of North Texas since 2002. She is the president and co-founding board member of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art (AMCA) of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey.

Elaine A. King is a curator, critic, professor, and editor.

Kim Stringfellow is an American artist, educator, and photographer based out of Joshua Tree, California. She is an associate professor at the San Diego State School of Art, Design, and Art History. Stringfellow has made transmedia documentaries of landscape and the economic effects of environmental issues on humans and habitat. Stringfellow's photographic and multimedia projects engage human/landscape interactions and explore the interrelation of the global and the local.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Andy Warhol Museum</span> Museum dedicated to Andy Warhols art

The Andy Warhol Museum is located on the North Shore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is the largest museum in North America dedicated to a single artist. The museum holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives from the Pittsburgh-born pop art icon Andy Warhol.

Naomi Beckwith is the deputy director and chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She joined the museum in June 2021. Previously she had been the senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Beckwith joined the curatorial staff there in May 2011.

Catherine Lord is an American artist, writer, curator, social activist, professor, scholar exploring themes of feminism, cultural politics and colonialism. In 2010, she was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal.

Pip Day is a Canadian/Irish/British curator and writer. She was the Director/Curator of the SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Montreal from 2012-2019. She is also a contributing editor to Cabinet Magazine and has written independently for catalogues and journals including Art Review, Curare and Photography Quarterly. Day made a contribution to the catalogue From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969–74 where she wrote on artists' initiatives in Argentina and their influence on Lippard's developing political consciousness.

Kellie Jones is an American art historian and curator. She is a Professor in Art History and Archaeology in African American Studies at Columbia University. She won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Tancons</span> Guadeloupean art historian

Claire Tancons is a curator, critic, and historian of art. She was born in Guadeloupe and is currently based in Paris, after living for nearly two decades between the Caribbean, primarily in Trinidad & Tobago, and the United States, mostly in New York and New Orleans.

Leslie King-Hammond is an American artist, curator and art historian who is the Founding Director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she is also Graduate Dean Emeritus.

Atta Kwami was a Ghanaian painter, printmaker, independent art historian and curator. He was educated and taught at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, and in the United Kingdom. He created works that improvise form and colour and speak to uniquely Ghanaian architecture and African strip-woven textiles, including those of the Kente, the Ewe and Asante of Ghana.

Meg Onli is an African-American art curator and writer. She is currently the Andrea B. Laporte Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her curatorial work primarily revolves around the black experience, language, and constructions of power and space. Her writing has been published in Art21, Daily Serving, and Art Papers. In September 2022, it was announced that Onli would co-curate the 2024 Whitney Biennial with Chrissie Iles.

Yesomi Umolu is a British curator of contemporary art and writer who has been director of curatorial affairs and public practice for the Serpentine Galleries since 2020.

Jamillah James is an American curator. She is the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

References

  1. "Staff". Block Museum - Northwestern University . Retrieved March 26, 2020.
  2. 1 2 Enwonwu, Oliver; Olaniyan, Oyindamola (July 11, 2019). "Ask the Curator: Janet Dees and Kathleen Bickford Berzock". Omenka Online. Retrieved March 26, 2020.
  3. 1 2 "Northwestern's Block Museum Hires New Curator". Artforum . August 25, 2015. Retrieved March 26, 2020.
  4. "RENATE ALLER: OCEAN I DESERT". Radius Books. May 19, 2014. Archived from the original on March 26, 2020.
  5. Kotecki, Peter (August 27, 2015). "Contemporary art expert Janet Dees joins Block Museum". The Daily Northwestern . Retrieved March 26, 2020.
  6. "The Warhol Foundation will award $413,500 in Fall 2018 Curatorial Research Fellowships". Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. January 23, 2019. Archived from the original on March 26, 2020. Retrieved March 26, 2020.