Delia Solomons is a historian of modern and contemporary art in the U.S. and Latin America. Her research examines the relationships forged between exhibition practices, visual culture, and inter-American politics in the 1960s.
PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
MA, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
BA, Washington University in St. Louis
Selected Publications:
Forthcoming: Cold War in the White Cube: Latin American Art for U.S. Audiences (1959–1968) (Penn State University Press)
Forthcoming: “Marisol’s Babies, Nuclear Giants, and Other Monsters of Our Own Creation” (commissioned essay in progress)
“Having a Coke with Marisol and Frank O’Hara,” in post: notes on art in a global context. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2021. https://post.moma.org/having-a-coke-with-marisol-and-frank-ohara/
“Marisol’s Antimonument: Masculinity, Pan-Americanism, and Other Imaginaries,” Art Bulletin Vol 102, No 3 (Fall 2020): 104-29.
Co-edited with Faye Gleisser, “Armed/Unarmed: Guns in American Visual and Material Culture,” Special Themed Issue of the journal of visual culture, Vol. 17, Issue 3 (Winter 2018/19). (Inclusive in this volume: an introduction, six featured essays, a curatorial roundtable, and a portfolio of artworks).
“Hot Styles and Cold War: Collecting Practices at MoMA and other Museums in the Sixties.” In The Americas Revealed: Collecting Colonial and Modern Latin American Art in the United States. Edited by Edward Sullivan. New York: The Frick Collection and The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018.
“Staging the Global: Latin American Art in the Guggenheim and Carnegie Internationals of the 1960s.” Journal of Curatorial Studies Vol. 3, Nos. 2–3 (June 2014): 290–319.
Sari Dienes, with Alexis Lowry. Exhibition brochure. New York: The Drawing Center, 2014.
“Cronología,” with Lori Cole. In Jordana Mendelson, ed. Encuentros con los años ’30. Exhibition catalogue, 398-405. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2012.
“Bruce Nauman.” In Meredith Malone and Rachel Nackman, eds. Notation: Contemporary Drawing as Idea and Process. Online exhibition catalogue. St. Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2012.
In my research and teaching, I examine exhibition practices, transnational exchange, politics, and visual culture in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States and Latin America. My book project—Cold War in the White Cube: Latin American Art for U.S. Audiences (1959–68) (Penn State University Press, forthcoming)—explores the sudden surge of exhibitions on Latin American art that unfolded across the United States amid escalating inter-American tensions in the sixties. The project studies art’s role in constructing panamerican, Latin American, and U.S. imaginaries on U.S. soil in the years surrounding the Cuban Revolution and Alliance for Progress. This research has been supported by the Humanities Initiative, Kress Foundation, Institute of Fine Arts, and Institute for Studies on Latin American Art.
I have developed a second line of research devoted to the sculpture of Paris-born Venezuelan-American artist Marisol. My recent article in Art Bulletin examines how Marisol’s The Generals (1961–62) unleashed a critique of monuments, nationalism, bellicose masculinity, the lavender scare, and Cold War propaganda about hemispheric unity. In an essay for MoMA’s post: notes on art in a global context, I consider the layered, poignant relationship between Marisol’s Love (1962) and her friend Frank O’Hara’s poem “Having a Coke With You” (1960). I am currently developing an essay on Marisol’s Baby Girl and Baby Boy (both 1962–63) as well as a monograph on the artist.
In an interdisciplinary project that critically examines gun violence in the United States, I co-edited the themed issue “Armed/Unarmed: Guns in American Visual and Material Culture” for the journal of visual culture (Winter 2018/19). I also co-curated the exhibition Sari Dienes (The Drawing Center, New York, 2014) and worked as a curatorial/research assistant on exhibitions for the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Grey Art Gallery. Prior to coming to Drexel, I taught at Tulane University, New York University, and the City University of New York.
I regularly teach the courses Contemporary Art, Latin American Art, Introduction to Art 103, Art and Revolution, Material Matters in Contemporary Art, and Contemporary Art Issues (an MA course for the Interior Architecture Program). I am also developing a new Global Pop Art class.