New professor for Theory and Mediation of Contemporary Art as of 1.3.: Alena J. Williams

Alena Williams is Professor for Theory and Mediation of Contemporary Art in the Department for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She teaches courses in contemporary art history and theory; film and media studies; and the environmental humanities. Her research focuses on the epistemology of the image in art, film, and media with a long-range view across the twentieth century. Previously, Williams was Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, where she was Associate Director of the Environmental Studies Program. She also taught in the Department of Art History and Studio Art and the Graduate Art Program at Williams College and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Williams received her Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in New York. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (2017); a DAAD Fellow at the Institute for the History and Theory of Design at the Universität der Künste Berlin (2018); and a Society Fellow of the Cornell Society for the Humanities at Cornell University (2019-2020). Her research and projects have been supported by the Hellman Foundation; the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; the Lannan Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Arts.

A curator and writer on modern and contemporary art, Williams has contributed to publications of The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art/KW Institute of Contemporary Art; Ars Electronica; Guggenheim Museum/Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology; the Jewish Museum Berlin; the Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung Berlin; and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. From 2010-2013, Williams curated Nancy Holt: Sightlines, an international traveling exhibition on American artist Nancy Holt’s Land art, films, videos, and related works from 1966–1980 for the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University. The retrospective companion volume published with the University of California Press (2011; 2015) addresses the artist’s engagement with landscape across a critical spectrum, from visual modes of perception and observation; photography, subjectivity, and authorship; the politics of land-use; to the interrelation of media and language-based practices.