Dr. Jules Pelta Feldman is Assistant Researcher in the Department of History of Art. They were previously postdoctoral research fellow for the project Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge, sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation and hosted by the Institute for Materiality in Arts and Culture at Bern Academy of the Arts. Pelta Feldman received their doctorate in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and has worked at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Grey Art Museum. Additionally, they were director and curator of Room & Board, an artist’s residency and salon in Brooklyn. Pelta Feldman writes criticism for publications in the US, Germany, and Switzerland. Their forthcoming monograph, Charles Simonds and the Seventies, will be published by Hatje Cantz in 2025.
Pelta Feldman’s research interests include performance and ephemeral art; conservation history and theory; craft and materiality; video and electronic media; archival theory and practice; museums, curation, and exhibition history; memory, monuments, and public art; and social justice in the art world.
Some recent publications:
“Reperformance, Reenactment, Simulation: Notes on the Conservation of Performance Art.” 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual 4, no. 4 (2023): 1–37. https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/xxi/article/view/100738
“Conserving Performance, Performing Conservation: Kim Kardashian x Marilyn Monroe.” Studies in Conservation (2023), online first: https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2023.2260628.
“Lost Worlds: Charles Simonds at the Whitney.” Artforum 62, no. 1 (2023): 190-200. https://www.artforum.com/features/jules-pelta-feldman-on-the-art-of-charles-simonds-252950/
“Activist and Action Painter: On Politics in or as Art.” Texte zur Kunst 33, no. 130 (2023): 100-109.
“Marmor, Bronze, Fleisch: Zur Verteidigung der Denkmalstürze” (Marble, Bronze, Flesh: In Defense of Toppling Monuments). In Die Gegenwart des Denkmals: Auslegung, Zerstörung, Belebung, edited by Wolfgang Brückle, Rachel Mader and Brita Polzer. Zurich: diaphanes, 2023.
