Modernism, Art, Therapy

Hess Theater and Online, via Zoom

To mark the publication of Modernism, Art, Therapy (Yale University Press, 2024)—an innovative collection of essays by established and emerging scholars—this conversation explores the relationships between clinically derived art therapies, institutions, and artistic practices in the visual arts from the twentieth century to the present. Co-editors Suzanne Hudson and Tanya Sheehan are joined by contributor Julian Chehirian to share their ongoing research in a discussion moderated by Cris Scorza, Helena Rubinstein Chair of Education at the Whitney. 

A born-digital volume, Modernism, Art, Therapy offers a transnational history of modernist art, connecting discourses on art as therapy to broader questions of gender, disability, race, and the politics of care. It is available as an open access title on the Yale University Press website.

This program is presented in partnership with the Arts in Medicine department of NYC Health and Hospitals. 

Speakers  

Julian Chehirian is an artist and a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Science at Princeton University. His research probes histories of creative attention as therapeutic instruments in psychiatry and psychotherapy. He represented the Bulgarian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale with his collaborative project The Neighbours—a multimedia installation that examines the aftermath of political violence through an excavation of post-traumatic sites of domesticity.

Suzanne Hudson is Professor of Art History and Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. She is an art historian and critic whose research spans the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries with emphasis on alternative pedagogical institutions, including spaces of care work.
 
Tanya Sheehan is an art historian who works at the intersection of American art history, critical medical humanities, and critical race studies. She is Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art at Colby College and Director of Academic and Scholarly Engagement at the Lunder Institute for American Art.