• Graduate Program in Art History, Department of Graduate Program in Visual Arts, Department of Visual Art & Art History

  • Dan Adler

  • Associate Professor

Dan Adler profile image

E dadler@yorku.ca

EDUCATION

BA (McGill), MA (Toronto), PhD (CUNY)

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Adler’s areas of research include the history of art writing, modern and contemporary sculpture, German modernism, Frankfurt School theory, conceptual art, and the theory and history of contemporary art. He teaches courses in 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century art, with particular interests in 19th-century European painting, French and German Dada, and the development and reception of the conceptual art movement.

Dr. Adler’s most recent publication is Tainted Goods: Contemporary Sculpture and the Critique of Display Cultures (Routledge, 2018), which explores modern and contemporary tendencies toward assemblage.  He considers how these works incorporate tainted materials – often things left on the side of the road, according to the logic and progress of the capitalist machine – and offers a range of aesthetic models through which these practices can be understood to function critically. The book’s main chapters focus on a single exhibition by a different artist: Geoffrey Farmer, Isa Genzken, Rachel Harrison, and Liz Magor.

Dr. Adler’s other books include the monograph Hanne Darboven: Cutural History 1880-1983 (Afterall Books/MIT Press, 2009). He co-edited (with Mitchell Frank) German Art History and Scientific Thought: Beyond Formalism (Ashgate Press, 2012) and co-edited (with Janine Marchessault and Sanja Obradovic) Parallax: Stereoscopic 3D in Moving Images and Visual Art (Chicago: Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press, 2013). Recent catalogue essays include those on the work of Bill Burns, Hanne Darboven, Kristan Horton, Kelly Mark, Liz Magor, and Michaela Meise. A former senior editor of the Bibliography of the History of Art at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, he has published in the journals Art History and CAA’s Art Journal, and regularly contributes reviews to Artforum, C Magazine, and Border Crossings.

In addition to his formal university studies, Dr. Adler is an alumnus of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program. In 2016, he co-curated (with Lesley Johnstone) a Liz Magor retrospective exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal , which traveled in 2017 to the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; the Kunstverein in Hamburg; and the Musée d’Art Moderne et contemporain in Nice, France (the accompanying catalogue, Liz Magor: Habitude, was published by JRP Ringier). His other curatorial credits include the exhibitions “Francis Bacon and Henry Moore: Terror and Beauty” (2014) held at the Art Gallery of Ontario and “When Hangover Becomes Form: Rachel Harrison and Scott Lyall” (2006), held at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).

In 2019, Dr. Adler began researching modern and contemporary histories of sculpture in Japan, on a grant from the Japan Foundation and the Ishibashi Foundation, Tokyo. He is currently working on a short book about the assemblage sculptures of Nakanishi Natsuyuki, a member of the Tokyo-based collective High-Red Center in the 1960s. In addition, he is researching the book-length project Object Oriented: Hanne Darboven’s Installations, which focuses on large-scale works that the German conceptualist produced later in her career. The Darboven project, which draws upon archival material, is supported in part by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).

Graduate Program in Art History, Graduate Program in Visual Arts, Visual Art & Art History

People of AMPD

Assistant Professor

Natasha Bissonauth

Assistant Professor

Archer Pechawis

Assistant Professor

Marissa Largo

Administrative Staff

Dawn Burns

Professor Emerita

Shelley Hornstein

Technical Staff

Joel Wengle

Administrative Staff

Joy Raymond

Administrative Staff

Rose Le Coche

Assistant Professor

Robyn Cumming

Administrative Staff

Patrick Legris

Technical Staff

P. Roch Smith

Technical Staff

Lindsay Page

Technical Staff

Kotama Bouabane

Associate Professor

Tammer El-Sheikh

Assistant Professor

Holly Ward

Professor

Jennifer Fisher

Professor

Michel Daigneault

Associate Professor

Marc Couroux

Professor Emeritus

Jon Baturin

Professor

Barbara Balfour

Associate Professor

David Scott Armstrong

Associate Professor

Dan Adler

Professor Emeritus

Nell Tenhaaf

Contract Faculty

Chris Ironside

Professor Emeritus

Michael Davey

Professor Emeritus

Joyce Zemans

Professor Emeritus

Tim Whiten

Professor Emeritus

Bruce Parsons

Professor Emeritus

Guy P.R. Métraux

Professor Emeritus

Hugh LeRoy

Professor Emeritus

Barbara Dodge

Professor Emeritus

Shirley Ann Brown

Professor Emeritus

Ted Bieler

Professor Emeritus

Carol Zemel

Associate Professor

Kevin Yates

Professor

Brandon Vickerd

Professor

Malcolm Thurlby

Professor Emeritus

Karen Stanworth

Professor

Yvonne Singer

Associate Professor

Judith Schwarz

Associate Professor

Nancy Nicol

Associate Professor

Nina Levitt

Associate Professor

Yam Lau

Associate Professor

Leslie Korrick

Professor

Katherine Knight

Associate Professor

Hong Kal

Professor

Janet Jones

Professor

Anna Hudson

Associate Professor

Brian Grosskurth

Associate Professor

Sarah Parsons