Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is Associate Professor of American Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Shaw received her PhD from Stanford and was an assistant professor at Harvard for five years before coming to the Penn in 2005. She is the Visual Arts Editor for Transition Magazine and the Chair of the Visual Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association.

NEWS

Exhibition:

Dr. Shaw is currently developing Samba Sessão: Afro-Brazilian Art and Film, an exhibition for the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania.  The exhibition will be the final product of a Halpern-Rogath Curatorial Seminar that she is co-teaching with Dr. Tamara Walker of the History Department.  The exhibition takes as its focus a group of paintings from the John Axelrod Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Symposium:

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania will be host to a symposium organized by Dr. Shaw titled, Polo S: Reorienting the Visual Culture of the Early Americas.  In 1936 and 1943, the Uruguayan artist Joaquin Torres García made two related drawings both of which depict the continent of South America from a southern perspective. With the cardinal direction of “Polo S” written across the top of the continent, the artist implored his modernist contemporaries in the Southern Cone to reconsider their perspective on the geographic location of the contemporary avant garde impulse. By invoking Torres Garcíaʼs radical move, this international and interdisciplinary conference takes as its mission an exploration of the theoretical, regional, methodological, and subjective problems encountered by scholars who are currently working on the visual and material culture of the southern United States, the Caribbean, and South America. It is therefore an attempt to identify the shared challenges that researching and writing about objects produced in these locations prior to 1850 might present in a moment of de-centered intellectual discourse, not unlike the one that Torres García critiqued in the middle of the last century.

Television:

See Dr. Shaw on the new PBS series Art Through Time, look for episode 13 "Conflict and Resistance," now streaming online - check your local listings.

Transition:

Transition is a forum for creative expression from and about the African Diaspora.  Dr. Shaw joined the team at Transition as its first visual arts editor in summer 2012 .  Transition 106, the 50th Anniversary Issue and the first issue on which Dr. Shaw collaborated, will be feted on Thursday, December 8th at the New Museum in New York City.  Current and past contributors will be present along with notables from the world of African and African American Studies.

Travel: 

Join Dr. Shaw and Penn Alumni Travel for a fantastic trip to Spain from October 18-28, 2012. Follow in the footsteps of ancient Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans and Moors - people who once called this land home and contributed to the rich traditions and colorful culture of modern Spain. This special program begins in cosmopolitan Madrid, with its stunning architecture, lively streets and renowned museums. Immerse yourself in the artistic and architectural masterpieces in Toledo, delight in charming Burgos and tour the Old Quarter of San Sebastian, home to some of the city's finest architecture. Continue to Pamplona, long associated with the running of the bulls and setting for Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises." Visit Bilbao and the famous Guggenheim Museum, which houses a vast collection of contemporary art, before concluding in the vibrant city of Barcelona. Marvel at its highlights, including the architecture of Antoni Guadi, the fashionable Paseo de Gracia and the magnificent Cathedral - a fitting end to an extraordinary adventure!

Areas of Research

Dr. Shaw's first book, Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker, was published by Duke University Press in the winter of 2004.  Her second project, a museum exhibition and catalog, titled Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century (2006) was organized with the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts before traveling to the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington and the Long Beach Art Museum in California.  

Dr. Shaw recently completed a book manuscript titled, Strictly a Negro Art: Biography and Belief in the Work of Sargent Johnson.

2011-12 Speaking Schedule

American Studies Association Annual Meeting in Baltimore, October 21, 2011

Elon University, October 24, 2011

Africana Classics Lecture, Penn, October 25, 2011

Lincoln University, November 30, 2011

The Wadsworth Atheneum, February 8, 2012