Biography

David J. Getsy writes to recover the queer and transgender capacities that have been lost or suppressed in histories of art and performance. His areas of research and teaching span modern and contemporary art and culture from the nineteenth century to the present, with a focus on queer and transgender histories and methods. He has published eight books, including Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art (Chicago 2022; winner of the 2023 Robert Motherwell Book Award); Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender (Yale 2015; reissued in paperback 2023); and the widely-read anthology of artists’ writings Queer (MIT 2016; multiple reprintings).

Getsy is the inaugural Eleanor Shea Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia. He studied at Oberlin College (B.A. Hons, 1995) and Northwestern University (M.A., Ph.D., 2002). His fellowships and awards include those from the Dedalus Foundation, the Terra Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Clark Art Institute, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Getty Foundation, Dartmouth College, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Kress Foundation. In 2023, he received a university-wide Award for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities from the University of Virginia. He previously taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2005 to 2021 and was, from 2011 onwards, the Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History and, since 2022, Professor Emeritus. At SAIC, his administrative work included appointments as Interim Dean of Graduate Studies (2015-16), Interim Director of the Low-Residency MFA Program (2018-19), and Chair of the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism (2013-15). In 2007, he was awarded SAIC’s full-time faculty member of the year. Internationally, he has also been the Terra Visiting Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary University London, and Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York. He is on the Board of Directors for the Fire Island Artist Residency for emerging LGBTIQ artists and writers, the editorial board of American Art, the Publications Committee of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (UK), and has previously been the chair of the editorial board of The Art Bulletin (2013-15, member 2012-16). He has served as a member of the Smithsonian American Art Museum advisory council (2021), a Public Arts Program Advisor to Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, and is a founding member of the Museum of Modern Art’s Scott Burton Estate Advisory Committee.

His current book projects have grown from research initially done for a retrospective exhibition on 1970s performance artist Stephen Varble for the Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, and a related satellite exhibition that traveled to Los Angeles, London, Chicago, and Berlin. This new research investigates the social and geographic proximities between the rise of public performance art and the concurrent emergence of the LGBT rights movement in 1970s New York City. He also writes essays and commentary on recent art, including articles in TSQ, GLQ, Criticism, Artforum, PAJ, Art Journal, Art History, Art Bulletin, ASAP/Journal, and numerous exhibition catalogues. In addition, pedagogy has been the focus of two recent articles that hope to assist in bringing perspectives and methods from transgender studies into the art history classroom: “How to Teach Manet’s Olympia after Transgender Studies,” in Art History 45.2 (April 2022), based on a keynote for the 2021 Association for Art History conference, and (co-authored with Che Gossett) “A Syllabus on Transgender and Nonbinary Methods for Art and Art History,” which won the Award for Distinction given by the College Art Association for most distinguished contribution to Art Journal in 2021.

University of Virginia Faculty Profile

Download David Getsy’s full curriculum vitae.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5484-2746

pronouns: he/him