PROVIDENCE, RI, October 2, 2019—The RISD Museum is pleased to announce the appointment of our fifth Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow, Conor Moynihan, who joined the museum on September 25.
Conor is a PhD candidate at the State University of New York at Buffalo, working on a dissertation titled "Queer Spectacles, Precarious Bodies: Remainders of Orientalism, Primitivism, and Exoticism in Contemporary Transnational Art and Performance from the Middle East." A version of his first chapter, “Timelessness and Precarity in Orientalist Temporality: Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s Aesthetics of Disorientation,” is forthcoming later this year for the journal Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture (2019).
In addition, Conor has curated exhibitions on queer art (Drama Queer, 2016, Vancouver, BCE, with Jonathan D. Katz), the relationship between illness and health (Ill at Ease: Dis-ease in Art, 2017, Buffalo, NY), and most recently on forms of giving and taking care (Three Acts, Three Scenes: Your Care, My Care, Careful Care, 2018, Brooklyn, NY, with Natalie Fleming). He has written criticism for a number of print and on-line journals, including Artforum. His research also encompasses Middle Eastern studies and disability studies.
The Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship is a three-year position for an outstanding junior scholar who wishes to pursue a curatorial career. The Mellon Fellow is fully integrated into the RISD Museum’s Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and participates in strengthening the Museum’s engagement with the academic curricula at Brown University and RISD. The fellow supervises the department’s active study room and acts as the primary liaison between the department and faculty teaching from the collections, including making regular presentations to classes. They undertake research in area of expertise, leading to an exhibition to be presented in the third year.