Brett Van Hoesen, Ph.D.

Associate Professor; Area Head of Art History
Brett Van Hoesen

Summary

Brett Van Hoesen specializes in European modern and contemporary art with emphasis on German art, Dada, photomontage, visual culture studies, German colonial studies and sound art. Additional areas of research include African art and museum studies.

Van Hoesen travels regularly for national and international conferences. Before joining the University of Nevada, Reno, she served as the visiting instructor for modern and contemporary art history at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Van Hoesen also has held museum internships at the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the University of Iowa Museum of Art. She regularly presents public lectures and provides docent training at the Nevada Museum of Art. In summer of 2012, she taught a course in contemporary art in Torino, Italy, for the University Studies Abroad Consortium.

Publications

  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Social Activism and the Politics of the Archive in Glyphs: Acts of Inscription" (Exhibition review) Nka - Journal of Contemporary African Art v.35, 2015.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Hannah Höch's Aus einem ethnographischen Museum series and Weimar Postcolonialism." In Hannah Höch, exhibition catalogue, Whitechapel Gallery, London and Prestel Verlag, 2014.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "The Culture of Critique?: Avant-Garde and Popular Press Photomontage in the Age of Weimar Postcolonialism." In Weimar Colonialism, edited by Florian Krobb and Elaine Martin. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2014.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Weimar Postcolonial Politics and the Rhineland Controversy." In German Cultures of Colonialism: Race, Nation and Globalization, 1884-1945, edited by Geoff Eley and Bradley D. Naranch. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "An alle Künstler!": The Politics of Place in Max Pechstein's Images of Palau." In Beyond Guernica and the Guggenheim: Comparative Studies in the Relationship Between Art and Politics, edited by Zoe Bray. Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, (in press, 2014).
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Between Truth and Falsehood." Commissioned exhibition catalogue essay for Chris Bauder: Don't Tear My Playhouse Down. Oats Park Art Center, Churchill Arts Council, Fallon, Nevada, 2013.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Town and City." Commissioned exhibition catalogue essay for Evan Dent: Boomtown/Rossitza Todorova: City Introspections. Oats Park Art Center, Churchill Arts Council, Fallon, Nevada, 2013.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Carl Einstein and the Lessons of László Moholy-Nagy." In Carl Einstein and the European Avant-Garde, edited by Nicola Creighton and Andreas Kramer, 122-134. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2012.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "From Pop Icon to Postmodern Kitsch: Michael Jackson and Contemporary Art." In Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle, edited by Christopher Smit, 81-100. Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2012.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M., co-authored with Jean-Paul Perrotte. "Sound Art - New Only in Name: A Selected History of German Sound Works from the Last Century." In Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century, edited by Florence Feiereisen and Alexandra Merley Hill, 141-156. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Who Knows Tomorrow: Berlin and Beyond." (Exhibition review) Nka - Journal of Contemporary African Art v. 28 (September 2011): 76-85.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism: Constructing the Weimar New Woman out of a Colonial Imaginary." In The New Woman International: Photographic Representations from the 1870s through the 1960s, edited by Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco with introduction by Linda Nochlin, 95-114. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2011.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Notes from the Frontline." n.paradoxa (international feminist art journal) v. 26 (July 2010): 77.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "Re-Visioning Germany's Colonial Past: Tactics of Weimar Photomontage and Documentary Photography." In German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and Modern Memory, edited by Volker Langbehn. London and New York: Routledge, January 2010.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "West of Worcester: Reflections on Grad Night." Keynote essay for exhibition of work by recent MFA and BFA graduates of the University of Nevada, Reno and Sierra Nevada College, June 2009.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. Three essay : "Guerrilla Girls," "November Group" and "Spartacist Uprising." In International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, edited by Immanuel Ness. Malden, MA and Oxford, England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Published in digital and hard copy: Link
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. Weimar Re-Visions of Germany's Colonial Past: Max Pechstein, Hannah Höch, and László Moholy-Nagy. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 2009.
  • Van Hoesen, Brett M. "The Short Century: Constructing a Contemporary Critical Biography of Africa." New Art Examiner 31 (January/February, 2002): 36-41.

Education

  • Ph.D., Art History, University of Iowa, 2009
  • M.A., Art History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1998
  • B.A., Art, minor in Dance, University of Iowa, 1993