Prof. Julia Bryan-Wilson is curating an official collateral exhibition of the Venice Biennale, entitled Louise Nevelson: Persistence. Opening April 23, 2022 at the historic Procuratie Vecchi in Plaza San Marco, the show marks the 60th anniversary of Nevelson's appearance at the 1962 Biennale and considers her use of assemblage as a feminist and immigrant strategy; it thus provides a glimpse of some of the themes Bryan-Wilson grapples with in her forthcoming book on Nevelson (due out in 2023 from Yale University Press).

Julia Bryan-Wilson joins Jolene Rickard as plenary speakers, along with keynote Sanford Biggers, at the Textile Society of America conference in October 2020. The virtual symposium will be held on October 15-17, registration ends on October 14.

Doris and Clarence Malo Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Julia Bryan-Wilson, has been awarded a 2019 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. Established in 1925 by former United States Senator Simon Guggenheim and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim as a memorial to their son, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation offers fellowships to further the development of scholars and artists by assisting in research in any field of knowledge and creation. The Foundation receives approximately 3,000 applications each year. This year Bryan-Wilson is one of five UC Berkeley faculty -among a diverse group of 168 scholars, artists, and writers- to receive the coveted award. Bryan-Wilson plans to use the funds for research and travel as she finishes her book about the work of American sculptor Louise Nevelson.

 Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's book FRAY: Art and Textile Politics has received CAA's 2019 Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism. More on the award can be found here. Congratulations, Julia!

Doris and Clarence Malo Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art Julia Bryan-Wilson has been awarded the 2018 Book Prize from the Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP) for her book FRAY: Art and Textile Politics. More on this award can be found here. 

Chilean-born poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña's exhibition, co-curated by Prof. Julia Bryan-Wilson, opens July 11 at the Berkeley Art Museum, with a reading and book signing on July 8. 

Prof. Julia Bryan-Wilson's recently published book Fray: Art and Textile Politics (U Chicago, 2017) was awarded the 2018 Robert Motherwell Book Prize from the Dedalus Foundation. The award comes with a $10,000 prize and honors an outstanding scholarly contribution to the history of modernism.

 

Prof. Julia Bryan-Wilson received the 2018 campus-wide award for her mentorship of graduate student instructors. This award recognizes contributions to teaching and learning, and is administered by the Graduate Council’s Advisory Committee for GSI Affairs and the Graduate Division’s GSI Teaching & Resource Center. 

Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson's new book Fray: Art and Textile Politics was selected by Holland Cotter as one of the "best art books of 2017" in the New York Times.  Assistant Professors Atreyee Gupta and Anneka Lenssen both contributed to another publication on the list, Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945-1965  (Haus der Kunst).    From The New York Times:  "Textile art, sometimes called fiber art, once occupied ambiguous terrain in a now-obsolete art vs. craft divide. Julia Bryan-Wilson’s book goes beyond arguing for fiber’s aesthetic legitimacy to demonstrating its political agency. And she does so by considering an enthralling range of hitherto untapped material: fantastic costumes designed by the 1970s queer theater troupe, the Cockettes; hand-sewn tapestries produced by Chilean artists depicting torture under the Pinochet regime; and the still-growing NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Ms. Bryan-Wilson’s research is more than substantial, but her propulsive style makes the book a page-turner."

 

Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator (Getty Research Institute), which includes Julia Bryan-Wilson's contribution "The Present Complex: Lawrence Alloway and the Currency of Museums," received the Historians of British Art Book Award for best multi-authored work in 2015.

The award citation reads:

Lucy Bradnock, Courtney J. Martin, and Rebecca Peabody, eds., Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator, Getty Research Institute.

Lawrence Alloway (1926–1990) was a key figure in the development of modern art in Europe and America from the 1950s to the 1980s. He is credited with coining the term pop art and with championing conceptual art and feminist artists in America. His interests as a critic and as a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York were wide-ranging, however, and included architecture, design, earthworks, film, neorealism, science fiction, and public sculpture. Early in his career he was associated with the Independent Group in London and although he was largely self-taught, he was a noted educator and lecturer. A prolific writer, Alloway sought to escape the conventions of art-historical discourse. This volume illuminates how he often shaped the field and anticipated approaches s... [show more]