Participant Info

First Name
Marin R.
Last Name
Sullivan
Country
United States
State
IL Illinois
Affiliation
Independent Scholar and Curator
Website URL
sculpturalthings.com
Keywords
sculpture, modernism, contemporary art, architecture, midcentury modernism, postwar, cold war, built environment, design, materiality, twentieth century, Chicago, United States, Europe,
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Art Historian. Curator. Writer. Teacher.
Chicago-based.

I am a specialist in the histories of modern and contemporary sculpture, especially on its relationship to photography, design, and architecture, but am more broadly interested in the how art shapes, and is shaped by, the built environment. Current research and curatorial projects include a book length project examining the relationship between modern sculpture and architecture in America during the immediate post-WWII period, and co-curating the first major retrospective exhibition on the work of Harry Bertoia, scheduled to open at the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2019.

Most recently I was Assistant Professor of Art History at Keene State College in New Hampshire, and prior to that appointment was the Henry Moore Foundation Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. During the 2017-18 academic year I served as the George Gurney Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a Tyson Scholar at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Recent Publications

Books
Alloys: American Sculpture and Architecture at Midcentury (In progress).

Sculptural Materiality in the Age of Conceptualism: International Experiments in Italy, New York: Routledge, 2017.

Edited Volumes
Postwar Italian Art History Today: Untying ‘the Knot,’ Co-edited with Sharon Hecker. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.

Book Chapters
“The Weakness of Lead: Materiality and Modern American Sculpture,” in Toxic Transformations. Lead in Modern and Contemporary Art, co-edited by Silvia Bottinelli and Sharon Hecker (Forthcoming, Bloomsbury 2019).

“Materializing Modernism in Postwar Italy: Fausto Melotti, Gio Ponti, and the 1961 Esposizione Internazionale del Lavoro,” in Material Imaginations: Art in Europe, 1946-72, eds. Natalie Adamson and Steven Harris. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.

Articles
“Chandeliers for the Space Age: Richard Lippold at Lincoln Center.” (Under review, American Art)

“Sublimating Sculpture: Robert Smithson, Photography, and the Transformation of Matter at the End of the 1960s,” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, (Summer 2019). (Forthcoming)

“Alloyed Screens: Harry Bertoia and the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Building – 510 Fifth Avenue.” Sculpture Journal 25, no. 3 special issue on Sculpture and Architecture (2016): 361-380.

“Materializing Modernism in Postwar Italy: Fausto Melotti, Gio Ponti, and the 1961 Esposizione Internazionale del Lavoro,” Art History, Special Issue: Material Practice and Critical Consciousness in Postwar European Art, 1946-1971, 39, no. 4 (September 2016): 720-743.

“Reflective Acts: Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden,” History of Photography, 39, no. 4 (December 2015): 405-423.

“Considering the Fuller Life Beneath in Alberto Burri’s Combustioni,” NOIT 2 (May 2014): 52-59.

“Activating Sculpture: The Curatorial Program of Sculture nella città,” Journal of Curatorial Studies 2, no.3 (2013): 356-382.

Commissioned Essays
“Lynn Chadwick in the United States,” in Lynn Chadwick. The Artist Revealed in his Work. Zurich: Scheidegger & Speiss, 2019 (Forthcoming).

“Henry Moore’s Photographic Identity,” in Anne Wagner, Robert Sutton, eds. Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity, Tate, 2015. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/henry-moore/marin-r-sullivan-henry-moores-photographic-identity-r1151299.

“The Matter of Landscape in Jules Olitski’s Late Paintings,” in Jules Olitski: Landscapes. Keene: Thorne-Sagendorph Gallery, Keene State College, 2015.

“Divergent but Parallel: The Ceramic Sculpture of Lucio Fontana and Fausto Melotti in Postwar Italy,” in Return to Earth: Ceramic Sculpture of Fontana, Melotti, Miró, Picasso, and Noguchi, 1943–1963. Dallas: Nasher Sculpture Center, 2013.

 

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States, Italy
Expertise by Geography
England, Mediterranean, North America
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Art & Architectural History, Museums, Urban History