March 12, 2007

Jennifer González receives Wyeth Foundation art grant

By Scott Rappaport

History of art and visual culture associate professor Jennifer González has received a $16,000 publication grant from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art in suppport of her forthcoming book: Subject to Display: Restaging Race in Contemporary Installation Art (MIT Press). The grant is awarded through the College Art Association to support the publication of books on American art.

Jennifer González

González said her book will focus on the works of James Luna, Fred Wilson, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Pepón Osorio, and Renée Green. “These artists have drawn attention to the fact that the collection and display of artifacts is a primary means by which a nation tells the story of its past and locates the cultures of its citizens in the present,” said González. “By creating gallery installations or by working directly with museum archives, these artists have played a pivotal role not only in the transformation of contemporary art and museum culture, but also in reviving the history, narrative, and biography of otherwise marginalized subjects.”

González has written for periodicals such as Frieze, Diacritics, Inscriptions, Art Journal, and Bomb. She has also contributed chapters to The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (1995), as well as books such as With Other Eyes: Looking at Race and Gender in Visual Culture (1999), Race in Cyberspace (2000), and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2005).