Anthony Gardner

Biography

Anthony Gardner is a Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Oxford, where he was Head of the Ruskin School of Art from 2017 to 2020. His research interests encompass postwar and contemporary art and curatorial histories, critical theories, and temporal and body-based media. His work focuses mostly on Australasia, Eastern and Central Europe, and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Among his published works are the monographs Biennials, Triennials and Documenta: The Exhibitions that Created Contemporary Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), with Charles Green, and Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy (MIT Press, 2015) as well as the edited collections NSK from Kapital to Capital (MIT Press, 2015), with Zdenka Badovinac and Eda Čufer, and Mapping South: Journeys in South-South Cultural Relations (The South Project, 2013). NSK from Kapital to Capital was a finalist for the 2017 Alfred H Barr Award for Exhibition Catalogues, College Art Association.

Gardner’s work has appeared in journals such as documenta Studien / documenta Studies (2020), Humanities Research (2013), Third Text (2012, 2013), ARTMargins (2012), Journal of Art Historiography (2011) and Postcolonial Studies (2010). He served as the editor of the MIT Press journals ARTMargins (2012–2021) and ARTMargins Online (2014–2019), and he continues as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board.

Gardner has received a John Fell Fund Grant (2019–2022), European Commissions Horizon Grant (2020) and British Academy Small Research Grant (2014), and he participated in a Red Mansion Trust research residency in Beijing (2019). He has been a visiting professor at the Estonian Academy of the Arts, Tallinn (2018); National Taipei University of Education (2018); and New Europe College, Bucharest (2011).

He earned a BA (Hons) and MA (Research) from the School of Art History, University of Melbourne (1999 and 2001, respectively); a LLB (Hons) from the School of Law, University of Melbourne (2003); and a PhD from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (2009).

Born in 1976 in Melbourne, he lives and works in Oxford.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2023