Michele Greet

Michele Greet

Michele Greet

Director, Art History Program

Professor

Art History: Twentieth-century Andean art, Latin American artists in Europe

Professor Greet is Full Professor of Art History and affiliated faculty in Latin American Studies, Honors, and Women's Studies. She is the former president of the Association for Latin American Art. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Latin American art from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 2004. She is author of Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, 1918-1939 (Yale University Press: 2018) and Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 (Penn State University Press: 2009). She is co-editor, with Gina McDaniel Tarver, of the anthology Art Museums of Latin America: Structuring Representation (Routledge: 2018). She has lectured widely on modern Latin American art and published articles in national and international journals including Papers of Surrealism, Journal for Surrealism and the Americas, Artelogie, and Journal of Curatorial Studies. She has also written exhibition catalogue essays for MoMA (New York), Museu de Arte de São Paulo, El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and El Museo del Barrio. She is currently working on a book on Abstraction in the Andes, 1950-1970.

Current Research

Abstraction in the Andes: an exploration of abstract tendencies in post-War art in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia

Selected Publications

Books:

Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, Yale University Press, 2018.

 Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960, “Refiguring Modernism: Arts, Literatures and Sciences” series, Penn State University Press, 2009.

Edited volume:

Art Museums of Latin America: Structuring Representation (Routledge, Research in Art Museums and Exhibitions series, 2018). Co-editor with Gina M. Tarver

Journal articles/catalogue essays:

“Two Pioneering Women bring Abstraction to the Andes,” Historical Narratives of Global Modern Art: An Anthology. Irina D. Costache & Clare Kunny, eds. Routledge Research in Art History series. New York and London: Routledge, 2023, 192-203. 

“Introduction: Alejandro Mario Yllanes’ Bolivian Indigenism” in Alejando Mario Yllanes, Ex. Cat. Ben Elwes Fine Art, London, 2023

“Latin American Artists at the Académie Lhote,” Correlating Cultural and Ideological Positions: André Lhote, Paris And His Former International Students, University of Innsbruck Press, 2020.

“Rómulo Rozo: A Colombian Sculptor in Paris,” Rómulo Rozo ¿Una vanguardia propia? Christian Padilla ed. Bogotá: Proyecto Bachué, 2020.

"Para Francês Ver: Tarsila do Amaral's Brazilian Landscapes,” in Tarsila do Amaral. Exh. Cat. São Paulo: Museo de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, 2019.

“Looking South: Lincoln Kirstein and Latin American Art,” in Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern. Exh. Cat. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019.

“An International Proving Ground: Latin American Artists at the Paris Salons,” special issue: The Americas in the dynamics of global visual culture from 17th to 20th century: circulation / exchange / materiality, Mundo Nuevo Nuevos Mundos (2017) https://nuevomundo.revues.org/70847.

“Rivera and the Language of Classicism,” in Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2016.

“Mapping Cultural Exchange: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars.” Circulations in the Global History of Art; Studies in Art Historiography series. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel eds. Ashgate: 2015, 133-147.

“Devouring Surrealism: Tarsila do Amaral’s Abaporu.” Papers of Surrealism. Issue 11, spring 2015: 1-39. http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal11/index.htm

“Occupying Paris: The First Survey Exhibition of Latin American Art.” Journal of Curatorial Studies Volume 3, Numbers 2+3, June-October 2014: 212-237.

“From Cubism to Muralism: Angel Zárraga in Paris,” Ángel Zárraga. Retrospectiva, Ex. cat., Mexico City: Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Apr.-Jul. 2014).

“’Exhilarating Exile’: Four Latin American Women Exhibit in Paris.” Artelogie: Revue de recherches sur les arts, le patrimoine et la littérature de l'Amérique Latine. No. 5, Fall 2013, https://journals.openedition.org/artelogie/5518

“César Moro’s Transnational Surrealism.” Journal for Surrealism and the Americas Vol 7, No 1 (2013)19-51.  https://jsa.hida.asu.edu/index.php/jsa/article/view/115/112

 “From Indigenism to Surrealism: Camilo Egas in New York, 1927-1946.” Nexus: New York, 1900-1945: Encounters In The Modern Metropolis. Ex. Cat. New Haven and London: Yale University Press and El Museo del Barrio, 2009.

“Manifestations of Masculinity: The Indigenous Body as a Site for Modernist Experimentation in Andean Art.” Brújula: revista interdisciplinaria sobre estudios latinoamericanos. Art and Encounters. December 2007, vol. 6 no. 1: 57-74.

“Pintar la nación indígena como una estrategia modernista en la obra de Eduardo Kingman.” Revista de Historia Procesos, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. October 2007, no. 25: 93-119.

Inventing Wifredo Lam: The Parisian Avant-Garde’s Primitivist FixationInvisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture. Issue 5: Visual Culture and National Identity, Jan 2005.

Expanded Publication List

Articles (peer reviewed)

“Evoking Place: María Luisa Pacheco’s Abstract Paintings,” Archives of American Art Journal vol. 61, no. 2 Fall 2022, 26-47. 

“An International Proving Ground: Latin American Artists at the Paris Salons,” special issue: The Americas in the dynamics of global visual culture from 17th to 20th century: circulation / exchange / materiality, Mundo Nuevo Nuevos Mundos (2017) https://nuevomundo.revues.org/70847 

“Devouring Surrealism: Tarsila do Amaral’s Abaporu.” Papers of Surrealism. Issue 11, spring 2015: 1-39. http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal11/index.htm

“Occupying Paris: The First Survey Exhibition of Latin American Art.” Journal of Curatorial Studies Volume 3, Numbers 2+3, June-October 2014: 212-237.

 “’Exhilarating Exile’: Four Latin American Women Exhibit in Paris.” Artelogie: Revue de recherches sur les arts, le patrimoine et la littérature de l'Amérique Latine. No. 5, Fall 2013, http://www.artelogie.fr/

“César Moro’s Transnational Surrealism.” Journal for Surrealism and the Americas Vol 7, No 1 (2013)19-51.  https://jsa.hida.asu.edu/index.php/jsa/issue/current/showToc

“Manifestations of Masculinity: The Indigenous Body as a Site for Modernist Experimentation in Andean Art.” Brújula: revista interdisciplinaria sobre estudios latinoamericanos. Art and Encounters. December 2007, vol. 6 no. 1: 57-74.

“Pintar la nación indígena como una estrategia modernista en la obra de Eduardo Kingman.” Revista de Historia Procesos, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. October 2007, no. 25: 93-119.

“Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris in the 1920s.” Global Studies Review, Fall 2006, vol. 2, no. 3: 8-9.

“Inventing Wifredo Lam: The Parisian Avant-Garde’s Primitivist Fixation.” Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture. Issue 5: Visual Culture and National Identity, http//www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/ivchome.html , Jan. 2003.

 

Exhibition catalogue essays (invited)

"Para Francês Ver: Tarsila do Amaral's Brazilian Landscapes,” in Tarsila do Amaral. Exh. Cat. São Paulo: Museo de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, 2019.

“Looking South: Lincoln Kirstein and Latin American Art,” in Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern. Exh. Cat. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019.

“Rivera and the Language of Classicism,” in Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2016.

“From Cubism to Muralism: Angel Zárraga in Paris,” Ángel Zárraga. Retrospectiva, Ex. cat., Mexico City: Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Apr.-Jul. 2014).

“From Indigenism to Surrealism: Camilo Egas in New York, 1927-1946.” Nexus: New York, 1900-1945: Encounters in The Modern Metropolis. Ex. Cat. New Haven and London: Yale University Press and El Museo del Barrio, 2009.

 

Chapters in edited volumes (invited)

“Latin American Artists at the Académie Lhote,” Correlating Cultural and Ideological Positions: André Lhote, Paris And His Former International Students, University of Innsbruck Press. 2020.

“Rómulo Rozo: A Colombian Sculptor in Paris,” Rómulo Rozo ¿Una vanguardia propia? Christian Padilla ed. Bogotá: Proyecto Bachué, 2020.

“Camilo Egas's Ecuadorian Festival,” Stand in My Place with My Own Day Here: Site-Specific Works from The New School. Frances Richard, ed. The New School. 2019.

“Andean Abstraction as Displayed at the OAS,” New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America. Mariola Alvarez and Ana Franco eds., Routledge: 2018.

“Mapping Cultural Exchange: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars.” Circulations in the Global History of Art; Studies in Art Historiography series. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel eds. Ashgate: 2015, 133-147.

Art and Globalization, Penn State University Press, 2010. The book is a transcript of discussions among panelists and fellows at the Stone Summer Theory Institute, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Grants and Fellowships

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to support the writing of book manuscript Abstraction in the Andes, 1950-1970 (2020-2021)

Millard Meiss Publication Grant for Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars (2016)

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to support the writing of book manuscript Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars (2012-2013)

Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the Center for the Study of Modern Art, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2008-2009)

Getty Foundation publication grant for Penn State University Press’s series “Refiguring Modernism: Arts, Literatures and Sciences.”(2008)

Courses Taught

LAS 100 Introduction to Latin American Studies (team taught)

HNRS 122 Reading the Arts    

ARTH 201 Survey of Western Art II  

ARTH 204 Survey of Latin American Art      

ARTH 360 Nineteenth-Century European Art

ARTH 362 Twentieth-Century European Art

ARTH 376 Twentieth-Century Latin American Art

ARTH 374 Art Now

ARTH 394 The Museum

ARTH 400 Historiography and Methods of Research in Art History

ARTH 460/599 Transatlantic Encounters in Twentieth-Century European and Latin American Art

ARTH 472/599 Latin American Art: Mexican Muralism

ARTH 492 Honors Directed Reading

ARTH 493 Honors Directed Research

ARTH 499/599 Curating an Exhibition

ARTH 600 Historiography and Methods of Research in Art History (graduate)

ARTH 601 Colloquium (graduate)

ARTH 699 Transnational Surrealism (graduate)

ARTH 699 Latin American Vanguards (graduate)

CULT 880 Independent Study

ARTH 699: Transnational Surrealism

ARTH 699: Latin American Vanguards

 

Education

Ph.D. 2004, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

M.A. 1998, Hunter College, City University of New York

B.A. 1993, Bowdoin College (Magna Cum Laude; James Bowdoin Scholar)

 

Recent Presentations

The Essential Oneness of the Western Hemisphere: The United States, Mexico, and American Art, Museo Nacional de Antropología and Bowdoin College Museum of Art with Support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, Mexico City Paper: “Circulations: Paris, New York, Mexico City” (2023)

Conference: Association for Latin American Art Sixth Triennial:  Encounters with the Archive in Latin American and Latinx Art, UNAM, Mexico City (2023) Paper: “Eclecticism and Erasure in the Archives of Three Women Artists from the Andes”

Conference: The Road Ahead Brazil 100 / 200: Reflections on the Legacies of the Week of Modern Art and the Bicentennial of Independence, Yale University, New Haven. Paper: “Brazilian Modernists in Paris: Anita Malfatti and Tarsila do Amaral” (invited speaker) (2022)

Conference: Forjando una historia del arte moderno desde los Andes, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia Keynote lecture: “Forjando nuevas narrativas de la abstracción desde los Andes” (in Spanish) (2022)

Conference: Explorando el pluriverso surrealista en América Latina, Coloquio internacional, Lateinamerika-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin. Paper: "Devouring Nature: On Biomorphism and Transformation in the Works of Tarsila do Amaral" (invited speaker, zoom) (2021)

Conference: Cosmopolite ? Art, Colonialisme et Nationalismes à Paris, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris. Paper: “Controversy at the Salons” (invited speaker) (2021)

Conference: Rethinking the Histories and Legacies of New York Dada, Loughborough University, UK. Paper: “Appropriating Picabia: Latin American Artists and the Dada Spirit”  (invited speaker and scholar in residence) (2021)

Transformative Performances of National Identity: Bolivian Art and Cultural Expressions, (virtual). Paper: “Ocho Contemporáneos en La Paz, 1953” (2021)

College Art Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, Paper: “Two Pioneering Women bring Abstraction to the Andes” (2020)

The Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, MoMA, NY. Why the Indigenous Today? Indigenism and Modernity in Latin America. Inaugural lecture: “The Afterlife of Indigenism in the Andes” (2019)

Nationalismes dans l'art en Amérique latine (XXe et XXIe siècles), Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris Paper: “How the Parisian Context Shaped Expressions of National Identity in Latin American Art” (invited speaker) (2019)

Zilia Sánchez Symposium, The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Paper: “Where Do We Go from Here?” (invited speaker) (2019)

Art History Across the Americas: Key Terms, Debates, and Places of Knowledge, Symposium at The Clark, Williamstown, MA. Paper: “Constructing Categories: ‘Latin American Art’ as Curatorial Strategy” (invited speaker) (2019)

College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, NY. Panelist: “How to Get Published and How to Get Read” (invited speaker) (2019)

Coloquio Internacional: Idiosincrasia del Indigenismo en América Latina. Pluralidad de fuentes y apropiaciones extra-latinoamericanas, Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, UNAM, Mexico City (scientific committee and invited speaker). Paper: “The Afterlife of Indigenism in the Andes” (2018)

SURREALISMS: Inaugural Conference of the ISSS, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA. Paper: “Walls Like Damp Sheets”: Roberto Matta’s Project for an Apartment"; Roundtable: The Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 10 Years On (2018)

Border Crossings: A Symposium Celebrating the Career of Professor Allen Wells, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME. Paper: “Vicente do Rego Monteiro’s Quelques Visages de Paris: A Cultural Parody” (invited speaker) (2018)

Nuevas miradas a los murales de la Secretaría de Educación Pública, Simposio Internacional, Salón Iberoamericano, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico City. Paper: “Presenting Rivera’s SEP Murals in the French Press” (invited speaker) (2018)

Atlantic World Forum: Digital Scholarly Dialogues About Atlantic World Cultural Histories, Middlebury College, VT. Panelist: “Intercultural Exchange in Pan-American and Atlantic Worlds” (invited speaker) (2018)

Sixth Annual Feminist Art History Conference, American University, Washington, DC. Chair: “Transnational Conversations in Theory and Practice”

Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, Barcelona, Spain. Discussant: “International Perspectives on the History of Latin American Art” - Visual Culture Studies Section, sponsored session (2018)

Center for Experimental Humanities, New York University “Latin American Art in Circulation: A Discussion with Lori Cole, Michele Greet, and Harper Montgomery Moderated by Michelle Clayton,” (2018)

Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, UNAM, Mexico City. Guest Lecture: “Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars” (2018)

Beyond Anthropophagy: Cultural Modernities between Brazil and France, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Paper: “Vicente do Rego Monteiro’s Quelques visages de Paris: A Cultural Parody” (2017)

Encuentro de Historia del Arte: Diálogos en torno al arte modern ecuatoriano, Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito. Guest Lecture: “Artistas Latinoamericanos en París” (2017)

The Birth of the Museum in Latin America, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA. Paper: “Structuring Representation: Art Museums of Latin America” (2017)

Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, Los Angeles. Guest Lecture (conversation with Jennifer Stager): “Modernism and Classicism, Picasso and Rivera” (in conjunction with Picasso and Rivera: Conversations across Time” exhibition) (2017)

World Bank Art Program, Washington, DC. Guest Lecture: “Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Early 20th century Paris” (2017)

Cold Atlantic: Cultural War, Dissident Artistic Practices, Networks and Contact Zones at the Time of the Iron Curtain, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Paper: “Andean Abstraction as Displayed at the OAS” (2016)

Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, New York, NY Paper: “Defining “Latin American Art”: Raymond Cogniat, Parisian Critic” (2016)

Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Chair: Negotiating Identity: The Art Museum in Latin America - Visual Culture Studies Section, sponsored session (2015)

In the Media

Guest scholar: Wrote wall text and recorded audio in Spanish for virtual exhibition on the work of Eduardo Kingman, "Intimo Silencio," for the Galería Kingman, Quito, Ecuador https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHSw5xjkbts (2021)

Guest Juror/Curator: Mythos, Target Gallery, Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA (Sept.-Oct. 2020) Gallery talk (recorded): https://torpedofactory.org/event/mythos/

Interviewed for documentary “Camilo Egas: Hombre Secreto” by Santiago Carcelén, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, 2009.

Dissertations Supervised

Olga Ulloa-Herrera, The US State, The Private Sector, and Modern Art in South America 1940-1943 (2014)