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 thrilled to teach art history at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, with a particular focus on museum and curatorial studies and the history of exhibitions. The vibrant and diverse contemporary art scene in Kansas City continues to inspire my teaching and research. I believe the city offers students an exceptional opportunity to connect classroom learning with real-world experience by engaging with exhibitions, collections, and programming across a wide range of local art institutions and alternative spaces. 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, activist art, pedagogical art, as well as History of Exhibitions and Curatorial Practices. 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.
Manuscripts in-Development:
Izabel Galliera, Art Activism in Hungary Since 2011, under contract with Amherst College Press.
Selected Recent Publications:
Izabel Galliera and Noni Brynjolson, editors, Pedagogical Art in Activist and Curatorial Practices. With fifteen contributors from all over the world, the edited volume examines the historical, philosophical and theoretical legacy of pedagogical art and its connections with various forms of activism and institutional transformation
“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)