Michele Greet
Associate Professor
Twentieth-century Andean art, Latin American artists in Europe
Professor Greet is Associate Professor of Art History and affiliated faculty in Latin American Studies, Cultural Studies, and Honors. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Latin American art from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 2004. Her book, Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960, came out with Penn State University Press’s Refiguring Modernism Series in 2009, and was funded by a Getty Foundation publication grant. In 2008-2009 she received a research fellowship from The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, to begin work on a new book on Latin American artists in Paris between the two world wars. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for the 2012-2013 academic year to support the writing of the manuscript. Prior to coming to George Mason she worked in various capacities for El Museo del Barrio, the Americas Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the College Art Association and taught at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, Baruch College, Hunter College and the School for Visual Arts in New York City. She has lectured on Mexican muralism, Latin American women artists, the Ecuadorian vanguard, colonial Peruvian art, and Latin American artists in Paris.
Current Research
“Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars,” manuscript in progress.
Selected Publications
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.
“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 Fixation” Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture. Issue 5: Visual Culture and National Identity, Jan 2005.
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 374: Art Now
ARTH 376: Twentieth-Century Latin American Art
ARTH 400: Historiography and Methods of Research in Art History
ARTH 460/599: Transatlantic Encounters in Twentieth-Century European and Latin American Art
ARTH 460/599: Latin American Art: Mexican Muralism
ARTH 600: Historiography and Methods of Research in Art History
ARTH 699: Transnational Surrealism
ARTH 699: Latin American Vanguards
Dissertations Supervised
Olga Ulloa Herrera, “The US State, the Private Sector and South American Art”; Cultural Studies, in progress.
Andres Marroquin Gramajo, “Three Essays on Economic Anthropology: Economic Development in Three Colombian Communities”; Economics, completed 2006.
Recent Presentations
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, Gallery Talk: “Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space” (2012)
Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States, Washington, DC, Guest Lecture: “Roberto Matta’s Transnational Surrealism” (2011)
George Washington University, Washington, DC, Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series; Guest Lecture: “Joaquín Torres-García in Paris: Artist, Innovator, Organizer” (2011)
The New School, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, New York, NY; Gallery talk in conjunction with the unveiling Camilo Egas’s newly restored mural Ecuadorian Festival, 1933 (2011)
Conference: Encuentros: Artistic Exchange between the U.S. and Latin America, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Discussant (2011)
In the Media
Interviewed for documentary “Camilo Egas: Hombre Secreto” by Santiago Carcelén, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, 2009.