My goals as a teacher, scholar, and community member are to identify, support, and critically reflect upon the potential role of art in pursuing social and political justice and viable forms of democracy, both historically and in the contemporary period. As outlined by the authors of the 2010 book "How Learning Works," learning is a process, not a product. It involves change in knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes. Learning is not something done "to" students, but rather something students themselves "do." Such principles guide my teaching and design of my courses. I am excited to be able to teach art history courses with a focus on museum and curatorial studies and exhibition history at UMKC. I have been inspired by the robust and diverse contemporary art scene in Kansas City, which I believe can offer students a wonderfully rich opportunity to apply and connect course materials to art exhibitions and programs at various art spaces in the city. Previously, I have taught at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; McDaniel College in Maryland; McDaniel-Budapest in Budapest, Hungary; and Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.
My core teaching, curatorial, and research interests are contemporary art in a global context with a particular focus on socially and politically engaged art and activist art. I received a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Pittsburgh. My dissertation, supervised by Terry Smith, is titled: “Reclaiming Public Life, Building Public Spheres: Contemporary Art, Exhibitions and Institutions in post-1989 Europe.”
My book "Socially Engaged Art After Socialism: Art and Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe" was first published in 2017 by I.B. Taurus. In 2022, Bloomsbury published the book in paperback as part of their academic Art and Visual Culture section: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/search/?q=Izabel%20Galliera%20.
Manuscripts in-Development:
Izabel Galliera and Noni Brynjolson, editors, Pedagogical Art in Activist and Curatorial Practices. With fifteen contributors from all over the world, the edited volume highlights the historical, philosophical and theoretical legacy of pedagogical art in contemporary forms of art activism and institutional practices. Peer-reviewed, under contract and forthcoming 2025 as part of the series Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies.
Izabel Galliera, Art Activism in Hungary Since 2011, under contract with Amherst College Press.
Selected Recent Publications:
“Guided Horizontality in Art Resistance Platforms in Hungary Since 2010” part of The Routledge Companion to Art and Activism in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Lesley E. Shipley and Mey-Yen Moriuchi, (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group), 2023
“The Spatial and Visual Dimension of Protests: Art and Activism in the Ludwig Lépcső / Ludwig Stairs Protest Camp (Budapest, 2013),” 2021
Selected Curated Exhibitions:
Commonplace Attachments: Artistic Practice During the Covid-19 Pandemic at the Lore Degenstein Gallery at Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania (2021)
Subversive Play: Artists Challenging Mechanisms of Social Control, on view at the Struktura Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria (2018)
Art Into Life, Life Into Art: Matei Bejenaru at The Artery Gallery, Part of DownStreet Art festival, (2012), North Adams, Massachusetts.
A Social Geography of Hair: Performing Gender and Identity in Contemporary Art at the Shear Madness Gallery, Part of the DownStreet Art festival (2011), North Adams, Massachusetts.
Torolab: One Degree (2008) and Stereovision (2007) at the Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.