Sandra Skurvida, PhD

Education

PhD, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Biography

Dr. Sandra Skurvida is an art historian and independent curator specializing in interdisciplinary, transnational, feminist, and environmental histories, theories, and practices of contemporary art. In her teaching, Dr. Skurvida seeks intersections—of art and politics, technology and environment, and the personal and the communal. Her research monograph, John Cage Composing, Computing, and Curating, is forthcoming from Routledge in 2024.

Dr. Skurvida has published numerous essays in edited volumes and journals, including, most recently, “I as a Readymade,” Your Time Is My Time (Mousse, 2023); “Barbad Golshiri’s Acts of Alterity,” ARTMargins, 12:1 (MIT Press, 2023); “Iranian or Not: Sociopolitical Conditions of Art Representation,” Transcultural Interplay Through Art and Social Life: Iranian Diaspora in Europe and Beyond (Königshausen & Neumann, 2022); Hybrid Practices: Art in Collaboration with Science and Technology in the Long 1960s (University of California, 2019); and Artist as Curator (Mousse, 2017). She contributed essays to the catalogs of retrospective exhibitions of Jasper Johns (The Whitney Museum of American Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2021), Kes Zapkus, and Aleksandra Kasuba (2014 and 2020, respectively, Lithuanian National Museum of Art).

Since 2010, she has collaborated with artists in Iran and curated video programs at venues worldwide, such as Woman, Life, Freedom: Year Zero at e-flux Screening Room, New York, September 16, 2023.

Selected Publications

Research monograph

John Cage Composing, Computing, and Curating (Routledge, 2024)

Essays

"Barbad Golshiri’s Acts of Alterity," ArtMargins, 12:1 (MIT, 2023).

"I as a Readymade," Your Time is My Time, eds. Annika Toots & Merilin Talumaa (Milan: Mousse, 2023), 30-39.

"Confessions from Under a Mask: How to Get Plastered and Keep Your Face for Years to Come," Echo gone wrong, March 29, 2023.

"Exhibition as Composition: Repetition and Difference," Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror (Whitney Museum of American Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2021), 300–304.

"Technologies of Indeterminacy: John Cage Invents," in David Cateforis, Steven Duval, & Shepherd Steiner, eds., Hybrid Practices: Arts in Collaboration with Science and Technology in the Long 1960s (University of California Press, 2019), 165–186.

"John Cage, Rolywholyover A Circus, 1993," in Elena Filipovic, ed., The Artist as Curator (Milan: Mousse, 2017), 229–245.

Courses Authored

HA 202 Feminist Art Histories, Theories, and Practices
Feminist movements gave rise to a gender-based analysis of art and its histories. Gender, understood as a system of power, underlies feminist art histories, theories, and practices addressed in this course, focused on the time from the 1960s to the present. G7: Humanities, SUNY GE: Humanities, Liberal Arts Elective. Minors: History of Art, Women & Gender Studies. No prerequisites.

HA 321 Eco-visions in Art and Design
This course surveys modern and contemporary art and design from an ecological perspective, highlighting consciousness-raising activism and environmental sustainability. G7: Humanities, SUNY GE: Humanities, Liberal Arts Elective, Minors: History of Art, Ethics & Sustainability. Prerequisites: Any HA course or approval of the chairperson

HA 310 Global Contemporaries in the World of Art
Focusing on global contemporary art since 1989 and using postcolonial art theory, students address diverse art practices grounded in their historical, regional, cultural, economic, religious, and political contexts. G7: Humanities, G9: Other World Civilizations, SUNY GE: Humanities, Liberal Arts Elective. Minor: History of Art. Prerequisites: any 2 HA courses

AM 523 Art in a Global Context: Post-1989
This graduate course addresses the theoretical and sociopolitical parameters of art production, presentation, and exchange after 1989 in a global context. This investigation, steeped in specificity, and aimed at decentering the canon of art history, is further expanded in student presentations, term papers, and projects. School of Graduate Studies Division, MA: Art Market Department

Courses

• HA 112 History of European Art and Civilization: Renaissance to the Modern Era
• HA 202 Feminist Art Histories, Theories, and Practices
• HA 214 Art in New York
• HA 231 Modern Art
• HA 310 Global Contemporaries in the World of Art
• HA 321 Eco-visions in Art and Design
• HA 331 Contemporary Art and Culture: 1945 to the Present
• HA 411 Western Theories of Art
• AM 523 Art in a Global Context: Post-1989