David Joselit
{{short description|American art historian}}
{{Infobox academic
| name = David Joselit
| image =
| caption =
| birth_date =
| birth_place =
| nationality = American
| occupation = Art historian, author, critic
| title = Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies
| discipline = Art history, visual studies
| sub_discipline = Contemporary art, media theory, modernism
| workplaces = {{Plainlist|
- Harvard University
- Graduate Center, CUNY
- Yale University
- University of California, Irvine
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
}}
| education = {{Plainlist|
- Harvard University (AB, PhD)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
}}
| academic_advisors =
| notable_students =
| notable_works = {{Plainlist|
- Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910–1941
- American Art Since 1945
- Feedback: Television Against Democracy
- After Art
- Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization
- Art's Properties
}}
}}
David Joselit is an American art historian, critic, and curator known for his work on modern and contemporary art, media theory, and image circulation. Joselit is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University. He held positions at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he served as a Distinguished Professor, and at Yale University, where he was the Carnegie Professor and Chair of the Department of History of Art. Joselit began his career as a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and has since authored several widely cited books, including Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910–1941 (1998), American Art Since 1945 (2003), Feedback: Television Against Democracy (2007), After Art (2012), Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (2020) which won the Robert Motherwell Book Award, and Art's Properties (2023). He is an editor of the journal October and a frequent contributor to Artforum.{{Cite web |title=David Joselit |url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/Art-History/Faculty-Bios/David-Joselit |accessdate=December 10, 2016 |publisher=cuny.edu}}
Early life and education
Joselit received both his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in art history from Harvard University.{{Cite web |last=Aggarwal-Schifellite |first=Manisha |date=2020-05-25 |title=Learning to interpret change through images |url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/learning-to-interpret-change-through-images/ |access-date=2025-04-06 |website=Harvard Gazette |language=en-US}} He edited a poetry magazine called Padan Aram during his undergraduate years and has expressed fondness for the Woodberry Poetry Room in Harvard’s Lamont Library.
Career
Joselit served as a curator at the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and worked for several years as a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston.
At Yale, Joselit was a Carnegie Professor{{Cite web |url=http://news.yale.edu/2009/03/20/art-historian-david-joselit-new-carnegie-professor |title=Art historian David Joselit is the new Carnegie Professor |date=20 March 2009 |publisher=yale.edu |accessdate=December 10, 2016}} and also a past Harris Lecturer at Northwestern University.{{Cite web |url=http://www.humanities.northwestern.edu/events/distinguished-harris-lecture/past-distinguished-harris-lecturers.html |title=Past Distinguished Harris Lecturers |publisher=northwestern.edu |accessdate=December 10, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161220122011/http://www.humanities.northwestern.edu/events/distinguished-harris-lecture/past-distinguished-harris-lecturers.html |archive-date=December 20, 2016 |url-status=dead }} He joined The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) faculty in 2014.{{Cite web |title=David Joselit Joins the Graduate Center’s Art History Program |url=https://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2014/01/28/david-joselit-joins-the-graduate-centers-art-history-program/ |access-date=2025-04-25 |website=CUNY Newswire |language=en}} That same year, Joselit was named one of six faculty members promoted to Distinguished Professor at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he taught until 2020.{{Cite web|url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/All-News/Detail?id=22712|title = David Joselit Joins Art History Program}} He described the Center as “one of the most important educators of contemporary art historians.”{{Cite web |title=Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman, Eminent Art Critic and Historian David Joselit Are Among Additions to the University Faculty |url=https://www.cuny.edu/news/nobel-prize-winning-economist-paul-krugman-eminent-art-critic-and-historian-david-joselit-are-among-additions-to-the-university-faculty/ |access-date=2025-04-25 |website=The City University of New York |language=en}}
Joselit joined Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) in 2020 as a Professor of Visual Studies. At Harvard, he taught a seminar titled “Vision and Power: Introduction to Visual Studies,” examining how images convey meaning, power, and historical context.
Joselit formerly chaired the Department of the History of Art at Yale University.
= On museums and online art platforms =
Joselit argues that while “there’s nothing like seeing a work of art in person,” virtual exhibitions can widen access and may change future art-world practices, potentially reducing the reliance on international art fairs. He was the co-curator Achim Hochdoerfer and Manuela of the exhibition Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age which opened at the Brandhorst Museum in Munich in 2016.{{Cite web |date=2025-04-10 |title=Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age {{!}} Museum Brandhorst |url=https://www.museum-brandhorst.de/en/exhibitions/painting-2-0-expression-in-the-information-age/# |access-date=2025-04-25 |website=Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age {{!}} Museum Brandhorst |language=en-US}}
Selected works
= Books =
- Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910–1941 (MIT Press, 1998).
- American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, 2003).
- Feedback: Television Against Democracy. (MIT Press, 2007)
- After Art (Princeton University Press, 2012).
- Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT Press, 2020)
- Art's Properties (Princeton University Press, 2023)
= Articles =
- Joselit, David. "Notes on surface: Toward a genealogy of flatness." Art history 23.1 (2000): 19-34. {{doi|10.1111/1467-8365.00193}}
- Baker, George, et al. "Round table: The present conditions of art criticism." October 100 (2002): 201-228. {{jstor|779100}}
- Joselit, David. "Yippie Pop: Abbie Hoffman, Andy Warhol, and Sixties Media Politics." Grey Room 8 (2002): 63-79. {{jstor|1262608}}
- Joselit, David. "Navigating the new territory: art, avatars, and the contemporary mediascape." Artforum (Summer 2005) (2005): 276-279.
- Joselit, David. "No exit: video and the readymade." October 119 (2007): 37-45. {{jstor|40368457}}
- Joselit, David. "Painting beside itself." October 130 (2009): 125-134. {{jstor|40368572}}
- {{Cite journal |last=Joselit |first=David |date=Fall 2011 |title=What to Do with Pictures |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41417908 |journal=October |volume=138 |pages=81–94 |issn=0162-2870}}
- {{cite journal |last=Joselit |first=David |date=Summer 2011 |title=Signal Processing: David Joselit on Abstraction Then and Now |url=http://artarchives.net/texts/2011/joselit2011.html |journal=Artforum}}
- Joselit, David. "On Aggregators." October 146 (2013): 3-18.
- Joselit, David. "Heritage and Debt." October 171 (2020): 139-141. {{doi|10.1162/octo_a_00381}}
- Joselit, David. "NFTs, or the readymade reversed." October 175 (2021): 3-4. {{doi|10.1162/octo_a_00419}}
- Baker, George, and David Joselit, eds. "A questionnaire on global methods." October 180 (2022): 3-80. {{doi|10.1162/octo_a_00453/111539}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://afvs.fas.harvard.edu/people/david-joselit Harvard University web page]
{{Portal bar|Art|History|Film|Biography|United States}}
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Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:21st-century American historians
Category:21st-century American male writers
Category:CUNY Graduate Center faculty
Category:American art historians
Category:University of California, Irvine faculty
Category:Yale University faculty
Category:Harvard University alumni