"Curating Queer Histories"
Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University
Established in 1966 to honor professor and former department chair Franklin M. Ludden (1916-2002), these lectures are intended to reflect an interdisciplinary approach to the study of art history, with a particular emphasis on theory and criticism. This year's Ludden Lecture will feature Julia Bryan-Wilson.
Lecture Description
In this talk, Dr. Julia Bryan-Wilson will speak about her experience co-curating a major show at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo called “Queer Histories,” on view at the MASP until April 13, 2025. The exhibition is part of the museum’s annual program around Queer Histories in 2024, which includes numerous other shows. In the talk, Dr. Bryan-Wilson will discuss the process of organizing the show, as well as its goals and historical foundations. “Queer Histories” treats queerness expansively, as a lens that lets us see the world differently. Of special interest across the exhibition is the notion of queering history—either by using fiction and storytelling to invent the histories that have been erased, or by turning to the past to envision new futures. The juxtaposition of material from the past and the contemporary moment underscores how histories—including art history—function as critical resources for LGBTQIA+ lives.
Bio:
Julia Bryan-Wilson (PhD, UC Berkeley, 2004) is Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University and core faculty in the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender. Her research interests include feminist and queer theory, theories of artistic labor, performance and dance, production/fabrication, craft histories, photography, video, visual culture of the nuclear age, and collaborative practices. She is the author of four books: Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (University of Californian Press, 2009); Art in the Making: Artists and Their Materials from the Studio to Crowdsourcing (with Glenn Adamson, Thames & Hudson, 2016); Fray: Art and Textile Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2017); and Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (Yale, 2023). Dr. Bryan-Wilson was a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, and her research has been supported by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery, the Clark Art Institute, the Getty Research Institute, the Mellon Foundation, the Terra Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among many other institutions.
This event is open and free to the public.
If you require accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Allison Buenger at buenger.2@osu.edu. Requests made two weeks before the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
