David J. Getsy is the inaugural Eleanor Shea Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia. He studied at Oberlin College (B.A. Hons) and Northwestern University (M.A., Ph.D.). 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. He taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2005 to 2021 and was, since 2011, the Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History. At SAIC, his administrative work has 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 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 non-profit platform for intersectional television distribution OTV: Open Television, the Fire Island Artist Residency for emerging LGBTIQ artists and writers, and the Historians of British Art, for which he chairs its grants committee. He has previously been the chair of the editorial board of The Art Bulletin (2013-15, member 2012-16) and a Public Arts Program Advisor to Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

Getsy writes about modern and contemporary art and culture from the nineteenth century to the present, and his most recent books are Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender (Yale 2015) and the anthology of artists’ writings, Queer (MIT 2016). He received the 2019 Dedalus Foundation Senior Fellowship in support of his newest book: Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art, the first monograph on the artist (forthcoming from University of Chicago Press in 2022). He curated the 2018 retrospective of performance artist Stephen Varble as well as two related satellite exhibitions; a book based on Rubbish and Dreams: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble is under contract with Intellect Books. He also writes essays and commentary on recent art, and his writings have been published in Artforum, TSQ, GLQ, Criticism, PAJ, Art Journal, ASAP/Journal, and numerous exhibition catalogues.

David Getsy Website