Julia Bryan-Wilson
Julia Bryan-Wilson (1973) is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on art since 1960 in the US, Europe, and Latin America. She is also the Director of the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center. Her research interests include theories of artistic labor, feminist and queer theory, performance, production/fabrication, craft histories, photography, video, visual culture of the nuclear age, and collaborative practices.
Bryan-Wilson received her B.A. in English literature from Swarthmore College in 1995, M.A. in art history from the University of California in 1999, and Ph.D. in art history from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. Prior to teaching at Berkeley, Bryan-Wilson has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, California College of the Arts, the University of California, Irvine and The Courtland Institute of Art, London.
Publications
Books
- Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era, University of California Press, 2009, 283 pp, ARG. Excerpt. Reviews: Rahtz (Art Hist), Corris (Art J).
- Robert Morris (editor), MIT Press (October Files), 2013.
- Art in the Making: From Paint to Crowdsourcing (with Glenn Adamson), London: Thames and Hudson, 2016.
- Fray: Art and Textile Politics, University of Chicago, 2017. [1]
- Louise Nevelson's Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face, Yale University Press, 2023, 352 pp. Publisher.
Journal issues
- editor, with Jennifer González and Dominic Willsdon, Journal of Visual Culture: "Visual Activism", 2016.
- editor, with Shannon Jackson, Representations 136: "Time Zones: Durational Art and Its Contexts", University of California Press, Fall 2016.
Book chapters, papers
- "A Curriculum for Institutional Critique, or the Professionalization of Conceptual Art", in New Institutionalism, ed. Jonas Ekeberg, Oslo: Office of Contemporary Art, Fall 2003, pp 89-109; repr. in Beck’s Futures, London: Institute of Contemporary Art, Summer 2004, pp 8-19.
- "Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece", Oxford Art Journal 26:1, Spring 2003, pp 99-123.
- "Hard Hats and Art Strikes: Robert Morris in 1970", The Art Bulletin 89:2, Jun 2007, pp 333-359.
- "Dirty Commerce: Art Work and Sex Work since the 1970s", differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Summer 2012, pp 71-112; repr. in Work, ed. Friederike Sigler, Whitechapel/MIT Press, 2017.
- "Handmade Genders: Queer Costuming in San Francisco circa 1970", in West of Center: Art and the Countercultural Experiment in America, 1965-1977, eds. Elissa Auther and Adam Lerner, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2011, pp 77-92.
- "Occupational Realism", TDR: The Drama Review, Winter 2012, pp 32-48; repr. in It's the Political Economy, Stupid!, eds. Gregory Sholette and Oliver Ressler, Pluto Press, 2013; repr. in Living Labor, eds. Milena Hoegsberg and Cora Fischer, Sternberg Press, 2013.
- "Still Relevant: Lucy Lippard, Feminist Activism, and Art Institutions", in Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, eds. Catherine Morris and Vincent Bonin, MIT Press, and New York: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2012, pp 70-92.
- "Against the Body: Interpreting Ana Mendieta", in Ana Mendieta: Traces, ed. Stephanie Rosenthal, London: Hayward Gallery of Art, 2013, pp 26-38.
- "Knit Dissent", in Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present, eds. Suzanne Hudson and Alexander Dumbadze, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp 245-253; repr. in Craft Becomes Modern: The Bauhaus in the Making, 2017.
- "Eleven Propositions in Response to the Question: “What Is Contemporary about Craft?”", The Journal of Modern Craft 6:1, Mar 2013, pp 7-10.
- "'Out to See Video': EZTV’s Queer Microcinema in West Hollywood", Grey Room 56, Summer 2014, pp 56-89.
- "Simone Forti Goes to the Zoo", October 152, MIT Press, Spring 2015, pp 26-52.
- "For Posterity: Yoko Ono", in Yoko Ono: One Woman Show 1960-1971, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015, pp 21-30.
- "Seth Siegelaub's Material Conditions", in Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, eds. Leontine Coelewij and Sara Martinetti, Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 2015, pp 30-43.
- "The Present Complex: Lawrence Alloway and the Currency of Museums", in Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator, eds. Lucy Bradnock, Courtney Martin, and Rebecca Peabody, Getty Research Institute, 2015, pp 166-187.
- "Keeping House with Louise Nevelson", Oxford Art Journal, Mar 2017, pp 109-131.
- "Mother-Taught: Embellishing Madalena’s Threads", in Unexpected Partners: Self-Taught Artists and Modernism in Interwar America, New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2024, pp 72-79.
