Katy Siegel

Distinguished Professor
Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Endowed Chair in Modern American Art

Areas of Specialization: Postwar and Contemporary European and American Art, Material and Social Histories, Curatorial Studies

Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin
Email: Katy.Siegel@stonybrook.edu
Office: Staller Center for the Arts #4217

Katy Siegel is the inaugural Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Endowed Chair in Modern American Art and a SUNY Distinguished Professor. Her scholarship focuses on postwar art, with an emphasis on transnational methods, the social construction of the art historical canon, and relationships between modern and contemporary artists.

She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions including Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture (SFMOMA, Crystal Bridges, Pérez Art Museum); Joan Mitchell (Baltimore Museum of Art, SFMOMA, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris); Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day (US Pavilion, 2017 Venice Biennale, Baltimore Museum of Art); Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017 (Baltimore Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Houston MFA); Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art (Baltimore Museum of Art); Postwar: Art Between the Atlantic and the Pacific, 1945-1965 (Haus der Kunst, Munich); and High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975 (multiple venues in the US, Europe, and Mexico).

Among her edited books are Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed; “The Heroine Paint”: After Frankenthaler; and, with Mark Godfrey, Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection. Siegel is also the author of Since ’45: America and the Making of Contemporary Art, and numerous essays on modern and contemporary artists. Together with Elise Armani, she is the co-author of What Was America? Art, Culture, and Politics in the Bicentennial Era, forthcoming in 2026 from Yale University Press.