Molly Nesbit Named Second Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor at Institute of Fine Arts

August 27, 2007

The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University is delighted to announce the appointment of Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art History at Vassar College, as the second Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor. In the spring of 2008, Professor Nesbit will teach a course on Marcel Duchamp and present the Second Kirk Varnedoe Memorial Lecture Series at the Institute.

Professor Nesbit teaches and writes on twentieth century art, film, and photography. She is the author of Atget’s Seven Albums (Yale University Press, 1992) and Their Common Sense (Black Dog, 2000), and has published a rich group of articles on contemporary art. A contributing editor of Artforum, she has taught at the University of California, Berkeley and Barnard College. Since 2002 she has been collaborating with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit Tiravanija on Utopia Station, a continuous book, exhibition, seminar, website, street, and newspaper page project.

The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Trust, this year Professor Nesbit also received an Arts Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation to develop a collection of essays on works of art set outside institutional definitions of modernism.

The Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professorship was established at the Institute of Fine Arts in 2006 to honor and perpetuate the memory of Professor Varnedoe’s dedicated and innovative teaching, mentoring, and scholarship. Professor Varnedoe vigorously maintained these roles at the Institute throughout his career at the Museum of Modern Art and the Institute for Advanced Study. The Varnedoe Visiting Professorship has been endowed through the tremendous generosity of Professor Varnedoe’s many friends, colleagues, and students who were inspired by his work. Each Kirk Varnedoe Visiting Professor will be appointed for one academic year.

The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University celebrates its 75th Anniversary in 2007-08 as one of the world’s leading graduate schools and research centers in art history, archaeology, and conservation. The Institute has a permanent faculty unrivalled in the breadth and depth of its expertise and unparalleled in the range of its adjunct lecturers from top museums, research institutes, and conservation studios. Since the Institute awarded its first PhD in 1933, more than 1600 degrees have been conferred. A high proportion of alumni hold international leadership roles as professors, curators, museum directors, archaeologists, conservators, critics, and institutional administrators.