Biography
Amy M. Mooney is a Professor of Art History at Columbia College Chicago. Her publications include a monograph, Archibald J. Motley, Jr., as well as contributions to anthologies and catalogs including Alma Thomas: Everything is Beautiful Beyond Face: New Perspectives in Portraiture, Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, Black Is Black Ain’t, and Romare Bearden in the Modernist Tradition. She is a recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. In collaboration with Dr. Deborah Willis, she launched a digital humanities project, “Say It with Pictures” Then and Now that recovers and examines Chicago’s African American studio photographers from the 1890s into the 1930s. This project will be the basis for an exhibition at the Newberry Library in 2027 where she will work with contemporary artists to create a new body of work in response to these important histories. While serving as the 2019-2020 Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art at Oxford University, she delivered Regarding the Portrait, a four-part lecture series that draws from her forthcoming book, Progressive Visions: Portraiture in the United States, 1890-1950, which investigates the social function of portraiture.
Instructional Areas
Art and Civic Engagement, Black Art and Visual Culture, Introduction to Visual Culture, Modern and Contemporary Art, Portraiture, and Theory.
Creative Practice and Research Interests
Portraiture, Politics of Identity and Photography
Degrees
B.A., Art DePaul University 1992
M.A., Art History Rutgers University 1997
Ph.D., Art History Rutgers University 2001