Abigail Solomon-Godeau (born January 6, 1948, in New York City) is an American art critic, exhibition curator, art historian, and Professor Emerita in art history, University of California, Santa Barbara.[1]

Education

B.A.,[2] University of Massachusetts, magna cum laude[citation needed]

Ph.D.,[2] Graduate Center, City University of New York

Career

Abigail Solomon-Godeau is an art critic and art historian[3] who taught[2] at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is now a Professor Emeritus there in the Department of History of Art & Architecture.

Solomon-Godeau is a 2001 Guggenheim Fellow.[4]

Exhibition curator

Among the exhibitions Solomon-Godeau has curated are;

Publications

Solomon-Godeau has produced over 100 works in 236 publications in 4 languages. Her writing focuses on feminist theory, photography, 19th-century French art and contemporary art, and she offers a reassessment or revision of the ideas presented by the artistic "canon" and of some of her predecessors in the history of art, such as Martha Rosler and Susan Sontag.[5] In a 2004 essay she describes herself as among those who "intellectually came of age as postmodernists, poststructuralists, feminists, Marxists, antihumanists, or, for that matter, atheists."[6] and later clarifies;

I do not consider my work to be particularly theoretical, although my writings on photography, like those on art history or contemporary art, are informed by the theorists, past and present, who have shaped my thinking overall. Perhaps my essays are best characterized as a form of practical criticism insofar as they engage with specific bodies of work, historical contexts, social relations, and institutional structures, rather than with the more philosophical questions manifested in the new field of the philosophy of photography.[7]

Her essays have appeared in journals including Art in America, Artforum, The Art Journal, Afterimage, Camera Obscura, October, Screen, and many have been collected in anthologies in various languages.

She is currently working on a book Genre, Gender and the Nude in French Art.

Books

Articles

References

  1. ^ Wheeler, Sarah B. Abigail Solomon-Godeau. In Warren, Lynne; Warren, Lynn (2005), Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography, 3-Volume Set, Taylor and Francis, pp. 1461–1462, ISBN 978-0-203-94338-0
  2. ^ a b c "Abigail Solomon-Godeau". History of Art and Architecture. University of California Santa Barbara.
  3. ^ Durden, Mark (2012), Fifty key writers on photography, Routledge, pp. 208–213, ISBN 978-0-415-54944-8
  4. ^ "Abigail Solomon-Godeau". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 8 April 2023.
  5. ^ la Grange, Ashley (2005), Basic critical theory for photographers, London Taylor and Frances, ISBN 978-0-08-046838-9
  6. ^ Solomon-Godeau, Abigail (2017), "The Family of Man: refurbishing humanism for a postmodern age", in Parsons, Sarah (ed.), Photography after photography : gender, genre, history, Durham Duke University Press, pp. 43–60, ISBN 978-0-8223-6266-1
  7. ^ Parsons, Sarah (2017), Introduction, Photography after photography : gender, genre, history, by Solomon-Godeau, Abigail, Parsons (ed.), Durham Duke University Press, p. 6, ISBN 978-0-8223-6266-1
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