Emerging Ideas on Art and Society: Julia Bryan-Wilson

Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA) presents Emerging Ideas on Art and Society, which invites an artist, a thinker, or a critic to come and share their doubts, questions, incomplete thoughts, and challenges about what art and society are today. A small group of students and faculty will gather to have an informal but intense conversation with the guest. A short text will be shared in advance to inform the conversation. While we expect active interventions, the guest leads the dramaturgy of the event with the questions they bring to the table that day. 

This conversation’s guest is art historian, curator, author and academic Julia Bryan-Wilson. Julia Bryan-Wilson teaches contemporary art and gender studies at Columbia University.  She is the award-winning author of several books, most recently Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (2023).  As Curator-at-Large at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, she has co-curated several exhibitions, including Queer Histories (with Adriano Pedrosa and André Mesquita, 2024).  In November 2025 she opened two shows—GUTSY: On Feminist Infrastructure (at MSN Warsaw) and Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces (at the Wallach Art Gallery, organized with Natalia Brizuela).