Vanessa S. Troiano

Troiano Spring 2023

Research Interests

  • Modern and Contemporary Art, Feminist and Women’s Art, Conceptual and Activist Art, Photography and Artist’s Books, Art History Pedagogy and Historiography

Education

  • M.Phil., Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY
  • M.A. (Distinction), History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
  • B.A., Art History and German Studies, Wellesley College

Vanessa S. Troiano is an author, educator, and Ph.D. candidate in Art History at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her forthcoming dissertation, “Susan Weil: Artistic Trailblazer,” is the first scholarly monograph to survey the career of the contemporary American artist Susan Weil (b. 1930). Vanessa’s doctoral work challenges the ongoing erasure of women artists by engaging in feminist approaches to revisionist history in order to confer agency onto Weil and inscribe her achievements into art’s history. Vanessa’s writings have appeared in Routledge Research in Art HistorySmarthistory, and Art History Teaching Resources. She has received several awards, including a Fulbright teaching assistantship in Vienna, a DAAD scholarship at the Goethe-Institut, Berlin, and the Graduate Center’s Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship. Prior to CUNY, Vanessa earned an M.A. degree with Distinction in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where she specialized in Global Conceptualism. In her instruction of Art History, Vanessa promotes cultural diversity and has taught international graduate students at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and undergraduates at Brooklyn College, City College, and Queensborough Community College. Since 2020, she has also served as the inaugural curator of Baruch College’s annual lecture series, “A Tour of the World in Six Artworks.”