Kristina Wilson

Professor, Visual and Performing Arts
Director of Art History

Kristina Wilson is an art historian specializing in modern design, modern art, and the history of museums in the United States. She studies how race and gender influence the practice of designers and artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She also examines how identity mediates modernism for the public—whether it be the public that encounters art and design in magazines, or the public that attends art museums. She is the author of numerous books, articles, and essays, including Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design (Princeton University Press 2021). She is currently researching the multi-racial design ecosystem of midcentury New York City.

Professor Wilson received her B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. Her scholarship has been awarded the Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in American Art (2009) and the First Prize Award for Excellence, exhibition category, from the Association of Art Museum Curators (2016). She has received grants from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Graham Foundation, among others.

At Clark, Professor Wilson regularly teaches:
ARTH 142: Art and the Experience of Modernity, 1880-1940
ARTH 143: Art from 1940 to 1970: Modernism and its Discontents
ARTH 144: Art Since 1970
ARTH 201: Art, the Public, and Worcester’s Cultural Institutions
ARTH 243: Arts & Crafts to IKEA: Modern Design in the Modern World
ARTH 245: Urban Art and Society in Jazz Age New York
ARTH 248: Gender and Representation

Degrees

  • Ph.D. in History of Art, Yale University, 2001
  • B.A. in History of Art, Yale University, 1993

Affiliated Department

Visual and Performing Arts

Scholarly and creative works

Awards and grants

  • Race in the history of design: Objects, Identity, Methodologies

    Terra Foundation for American Art

    clock icon May. 24, 2022 – May. 24, 2023
  • Race in the History of Design: Objects, Identity, Methodologies

    Leir Luxembourg Clark University Program

    clock icon Feb. 1, 2022 – Dec. 1, 2022
  • Higgins Major Grant

    Higgins School of Humanities

    clock icon Feb. 3, 2020 – Jul. 3, 2020
  • George Gurney Senior Fellowship

    Smithsonian American Art Museum

    clock icon Jul. 22, 2019 – Aug. 23, 2019