Melanie Woody Nguyen, PhD

Assistant Professor of Art History

Melanie Woody Nguyen received her PhD in the study of contemporary art of the United States from the University of Maryland. Her research explores ecology, performance, race, and ideas of the human in postwar American art. She is currently working on a research project examining artists engaging with the social and ecological impacts of highways. Her research has been supported by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Association of Historians of American Art, and the Getty Research Institute.

Contact

Education

B.A. St. Louis University, 2013
M.A. University of Maryland, 2018
Ph.D. University of Maryland, 2024

Research interests: Contemporary, American and African American, and ecocritical art history, with a research focus on artists addressing environmental issues in performance art of the postwar period.

Research Projects

• Review of Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective, by Karl Kusserow, ed., caa.reviews (August 28, 2024), doi: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2024.51, http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/4261.
  
• Selected object entries in Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: The Collection, edited by Stéphane Aquin and Anne Reeve. New York: Delmonico Books, 2022.

Exhibitions Organized

• Coralina Rodriguez Meyer: Mother Molds (University of Maryland Art Gallery, 2023)
  
• Here and Now: Recent Acquisitions, co-curated with Taras Matla (University of Maryland Art Gallery, 2023)
  
• Video in The Atrium: Cristina Lucas (University of Maryland Art Gallery, 2022)