Biography
Carla Kessler is a contemporary art historian with museum, teaching, and course design experience in the U.S. and U.K. Carla’s research interests include performance and time-based art; socially engaged art; installation and sculpture; lens-based media; spectatorship; expanded archives; and experimental methods. Before joining The Courtauld as an Associate Lecturer, she and PhD Candidate, she led strategic planning for museums including The Art Institute of Chicago and The Museum of Modern Art.
Thesis
Unofficial Evidence: Expanding the Archives of Installation, Performance, and Socially Engaged Art Since the 1970s
Funded by the Courtauld Scholarship
Supervisor: Dr. Lucy Bradnock
Advisor: Professor Sarah Wilson
I am writing a history of audience experience in four artworks from the 1970s to today. Though audience experience is core to installation and performance art, it is difficult to document, and so, remains largely absent from the art historical record. The goal of this project is to better archive and historicise such artworks, through retroactive fieldwork, oral history interviews, and social media analysis. Case studies represent a range of sensory and political concerns, including Walter De Maria’s large-scale installations on view in New York since the 1970s; a counter-monument by Marta Minujín; Taryn Simon’s participatory installation; and a recent durational performance conceived by Ragnar Kjartansson and participants from Detroit to Reykjavík.
Education
- PhD, The Courtauld Institute of Art
- MA with Distinction, History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
- BS, Theatre and History, Northwestern University
University and Museum Work
- 2023-present: Assistant Lecturer and Course Designer, BA2: Art History and Social Justice
- 2022-2023: Teaching Assistant, BA2: Frameworks for Interpretation, BA1: Foundations of Art History
- 2021-2022: Course design for the Department of Art History at The University of Pennsylvania (MA course title: ‘The Future of Arts Audiences’)
- 2020-2021: Online Learning Support Officer, The Courtauld Institute of Art
- 2015-2019: Course design and guest lecturer, Stanford University (BA course title: ‘Arts Organisations and the Changing Cultural Audience’)
- 2015-2019: Strategist, LaPlaca Cohen (strategic planning and audience research clients included the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the San Jose Museum of Art)
- 2008-2014: Public Affairs Liaison and Visitor Research Manager, The Art Institute of Chicago
Lectures & Publications
- ‘The Art Looks Back: Social Media as Method in Taryn Simon, A Cold Hole (2018)’, Association for Art History Annual Conference, 3 April, 2024.
- ‘Emotional Ambiguity: In Conversation with Ragnar Kjartansson,’ Immediations, No. 19 (2022).
- ‘TRANSMISSIONS: Making TV Art History,’ Immediations, No. 18 (2021).
- ‘Plastic-Wrapped Vanitas’. In Daina Mattis: Family Style. New York: High Noon Gallery, 2020.
- ‘Culture Track 2017: A Study of American Cultural Audiences’. Presented at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia; the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York; the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; Brooklyn College, New York; and the Guggenheim Museum Internship Program, New York (2017– 2018).