Kristina Wilson
Professor, Visual and Performing Arts
Director of Art History, Visual and Performing Arts
Scholarly Interests
Design History, Race and Gender in Design and Art History, Art History of the U.S.
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Kristina Wilson is an art historian specializing in modern design, modern art, and the history of museums in the United States. She studies how race and gender influence the practice of designers and artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She also examines how identity mediates modernism for the public—whether it be the public that encounters art and design in magazines, or the public that attends art museums. She is the author of numerous books, articles, and essays, including Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design (Princeton University Press 2021). She is currently researching the multi-racial design ecosystem of midcentury New York City.
Professor Wilson received her B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. Her scholarship has been awarded the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in American Art (2009) and the First Prize Award for Excellence, exhibition category, from the Association of Art Museum Curators (2016). She has received grants from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Graham Foundation, among others.
At Clark, Professor Wilson regularly teaches:
ARTH 142: Art and the Experience of Modernity, 1880-1940
ARTH 143: Art from 1940 to 1970: Modernism and its Discontents
ARTH 144: Art Since 1970
ARTH 201: Art, the Public, and Worcester's Cultural Institutions
ARTH 243: Arts & Crafts to IKEA: Modern Design in the Modern World
ARTH 245: Urban Art and Society in Jazz Age New York
ARTH 248: Gender and Representation
Degrees
- Ph.D. in History of Art, Yale University, 2001
- B.A. in History of Art, Yale University, 1993
Affiliated Department(s)
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Scholarly and Creative Works
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“Mid-Century Black Designers and Archival Logic.”
“Race in the History of Design: Objects, Identity, Methodologies”
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Remich, Luxembourg
July
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2022
Sponsored by Clark University
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Published by University of California Press
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2022
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Ebony and Life. Bates and Eames.
AIGA Boston February Meeting.
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February 2022
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2022
Sponsored by AIGA Boston
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Marketing, Empathy, Power: Locating Race and Gender in Mid-century Herman Miller Designs.
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School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation, Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI
March 2022
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2022
Sponsored by School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation, Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI
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New Books Network: New Books in Architecture/ New Books in Art
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2022
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2022
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Shining a Light on Forgotten Designers: Add Bates, Furniture Designer
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2021
New York Times
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Mid-Century Modernism's Racial History
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2021
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Add Bates, 306, and interlocking modernisms in mid-century Harlem
Published in American Art
Spring 2021
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2021
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Vol. 35
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Issue #1
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Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design
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2021
Princeton University Press
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Ebony’s “Leading Young Artists” of 1958: Representation, Abstraction, and Race in the American Art World
Winston Napier Memorial Conference
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Clark University
October
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2020
Sponsored by Department of English, Clark University
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Review of The Shape of Craft, by Ezra Shales
Journal of Modern Craft
November
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2020
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Vol. 13
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Issue #3
Taylor and Francis
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London
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UK
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Review of Design History Beyond the Canon, ed. by Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler, et al.
Design and Culture
Spring
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2020
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Vol. 12
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Issue #2
Taylor and Francis Group
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London
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UK
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Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
June 2020
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2020
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Vol. 79
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Issue #2
Society of Architectural Historians
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Cyanotypes: Photography’s Blue Period
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2016
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ISBN #0936042060
Worcester Art Museum
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Published in Journal of Design History
May
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2015
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Vol. 28
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Issue #2
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“Overwhelmed: Salon-Style Picture Hangs and the Limits of Our Historical Imagination.”
Street Hall Lecture, Department of the History of Art, Yale University
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New Haven, Connecticut
September
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2012
Sponsored by Department of the History of Art, Yale University
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“Ambivalence, Irony, and Americana: Sheeler’s American Interiors.”
Published in Winterthur Portfolio
Winter
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2011
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Vol. 45
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Issue #4
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The Modern Eye: Stieglitz, MoMA, and the Art of the Exhibition, 1925-1934
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2009
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ISBN #9780300149166
Yale University Press
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Livable Modernism: Interior Decorating and Design During the Great Depression
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2004
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ISBN #9780300104752
Yale University Press and Yale University Art Gallery
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“The Intimate Gallery and the Equivalents: Spirituality in the 1920s Work of Stieglitz.”
Published in The Art Bulletin
December
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2003
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Vol. 85
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Issue #4
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Awards & Grants
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Race in the history of design: Objects, Identity, Methodologies
Terra Foundation for American Art
May. 24, 2022 - May. 24, 2023
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Race in the History of Design: Objects, Identity, Methodologies
Leir Luxembourg Clark University Program
Feb. 1, 2022 - Dec. 1, 2022
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Higgins Major Grant
Higgins School of Humanities
Feb. 3, 2020 - Jul. 3, 2020
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George Gurney Senior Fellowship
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Jul. 22, 2019 - Aug. 23, 2019
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Alice Coonley Higgins Faculty Fellow
Higgins School of Humanities
2020
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David P. Angel Senior Faculty Award
Clark University
2021
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Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art
Smithsonian American Art Museum
2011
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First Prize Award for Excellence, exhibition category
Association of Art Museum Curators
2017
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Charles F. Montgomery Book Award
Decorative Arts Society
2004
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