Art, Art History, and Film Faculty

Kevin Lotery

Assistant Professor, Art History

Photo of Kevin Lotery

Kevin Lotery

Ph.D.

Contact

Devlin Hall 432

Telephone: 617-552-2237

Email: lotery@bc.edu

Education

  • B.A., Columbia University
  • Ph.D., Harvard University

Courses

Modern Art & the Avant-Garde, 1900-1945

Postwar: Art After 1945

Introduction to Contemporary Art, 1975-the Present

Artists' Design Exhibitions: Installation Art & Exhibition Making in Modern & Contemporary Art

Memory Work

Research Interests

Interactions between art, science, and technology

Exhibition histories

Theories of utopia and creativeness

Jewish diaspora in art, film, literature, and criticism

Memory and mourning

Biography

Kevin Lotery is an art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art in Europe and the Americas. His research has focused on interactions between art, architecture, and forms of technological and philosophical research. His first book, The Long Front of Culture: The Independent Group and Exhibition Design (MIT Press/October Books, 2020), examines the collaborative exhibition design projects of the unruly cadre of artists, architects, curators, and writers known as the Independent Group or IG in 1950s Britain. The first book-length study of the IG鈥檚 exhibition designs, the book argues for exhibition design as a crucial cross-disciplinary and global mode of aesthetic production and image distribution at mid-century, one that resonates with much contemporary art today.

His current research explores the last works of artists, writers, and especially, filmmakers and film writers whose work stemmed, at least in part, from the experience of the Holocaust and its generational transmission, such as Chantal Akerman, Miriam Hansen, Eva Hesse, Siegfried Kracauer, Claude Lanzmann, and Primo Levi.

Before coming to Boston College, Lotery was Lecturer in the Fine Art Department at the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He was previously a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Columbia University, and his research has been supported by grants from the Hauser & Wirth Institute, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, and the Institute for Historical Research, University of London.

Publications

Books

The Long Front of Culture: The Independent Group and Exhibition Design. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press/October Books, 2020.

Articles and Book Chapters

鈥溾�楪reat Historians Are Biological Freaks鈥�: Siegfried Kracauer鈥檚 Philosophy of History,鈥� October 185 (Summer 2023): 139-167.

鈥淚ntroduction to Collective Reception,鈥� co-author with Trevor Stark and Hyewon Yoon, October 185 (Summer 2023): 3-4.

鈥淒ance Double: Alex Katz鈥檚 Scenography,鈥澛�Alex Katz: Gathering聽(New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2022), 284-291.

鈥淟eft to His Own Devices: Richard Hamilton, Introspectre,鈥� Bricks from the Kiln #5 (December 2021), 164-180.

鈥淔olds in the Fabric: Robert Morris in the 1980s,鈥� October 171 (Winter 2020): 77-114.

鈥淭he Hamilton Variations,鈥� in Reaper: Richard Hamilton & Sigfried Giedion. JRP Ringier/ETH Z眉rich, 2017: 103-136.

鈥淩ooms: Richard Hamilton and Postmodernism,鈥� October 159 (Spring 2017): 55-85.

鈥溾�榃hat is happening鈥�: Notes on the Scenographic Impulse in Modern and Contemporary Art,鈥� Routledge Companion to Scenography, ed. by Arnold Aronson. Routledge, 2017: 135-150.

鈥渁n Exhibit/an Aesthetic: Richard Hamilton and Postwar Exhibition Design,鈥� October 150, special issue, Artists Design Exhibitions (Fall 2014): 87-112.

鈥淎rtists Design Exhibitions: Introduction鈥� co-author with Claire Grace, in October 150, special issue, Artists Design Exhibitions (Fall 2014): 3-8.

Ten extended catalogue entries in聽This Will Have Been: Art, Love, & Politics in the 1980s, ed. by Helen Molesworth (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art; New Haven: Yale, 2012): 鈥淛ennifer Bolande,鈥� 鈥淓ric Fischl,鈥� 鈥淩obert Gober,鈥� 鈥淔elix Gonzalez-Torres,鈥� 鈥淐ady Noland,鈥� 鈥淕erhard Richter,鈥� 鈥淒avid Robbins,鈥� 鈥淛ames Welling,鈥� 鈥淜rzysztof Wodiczko.鈥�

Two catalogue entries in聽Guggenheim Museum Collection: A to Z, ed. by Nancy Spector (New York: Guggenheim, 2009): 鈥淏ill Viola鈥� and 鈥淩achel Whiteread鈥�

Edited Volumes

Co-edited with Trevor Stark and Hyewon Yoon, Collective Reception: Essays in Honor of Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, special issue, October 185 (Summer 2023).

Co-edited with Claire Grace, 鈥淎rtists Design Exhibitions,鈥� special issue, October 150 (Fall 2014).

Exhibition and Book Reviews

鈥淭revor Paglen: A Study of Invisible Images,鈥� Enclave Review 16 (Winter/Spring 2018): 22-24.

鈥淭acita Dean: Buon Fresco,鈥� caa.reviews, Artists鈥� Books section (2 April 2018).

鈥淢arilyn and the Museum with Walls: Rachel Harrison at Greene Naftali, New York,鈥� Texte zur Kunst 107 (Semptember 2017): 198-201.

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