Shawn C. Simmons studies modern and contemporary art with a focus on postwar practice in Britain and the United States. His research interests include conceptual art, queer and feminist art histories, archival studies, and visual cultures of science and technology. His current research project examines the use of mapping and embodiment in the work of artists including Susan Hiller and David Wojnarowicz. He holds a B.A. in Art History with a minor in Urban Design and Architecture Studies from New York University, and an M.A. in Art History from the University of Colorado Boulder. As a 2023 Rough Gems curatorial fellow at Union Hall (Denver), he curated Against Nature, a group exhibition of five U.S.-based artists engaging with queer ecology.
Shawn currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Contemporaneity, a scholarly, peer-reviewed online publication edited by graduate students in the Department of History of Art & Architecture.
- Ph.D., History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, in progress
- M.A., Art History, University of Colorado Boulder, 2023
- B.A., Art History, New York University, 2020
Education & Training
- Dietrich Summer Research Grant, 2024
- Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 2023-2024
- Archival Research Fellowship, Ellsworth Kelly Studio, 2023
- Schwalbe Travel Award, Center for Humanities & the Arts, University of Colorado Boulder, 2023
- Rough Gems Curatorial Fellowship, Union Hall Gallery, Denver, 2022-2023
- Art History Area Research Scholarship, University of Colorado Boulder, 2022
- Graduate Teaching Fellowship, University of Colorado Boulder, 2021-2023
“Seen and not looked at: Jasper Johns’s Embodied Geography.” Constellations (blog post), Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, 2024.
“Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art.” SEQUITUR, Issue 10, Volume 2, Boston University (book review), 2024.
“On Entropy.” I Feel Everything at a Moment's Notice., Ed. Varie, New York, 2023.
