mgar

Full Name
Maria Garth
First Name
Maria
Last Name
Garth
Pronouns
she/her
Affiliation
Faculty
Title
Visiting Assistant Professor
Office
240 Lawrence Hall
Departments
History Art & Arch
Interests
Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture, History and Theory of Photography
Profile Section
Biography

Dr. Garth is an art historian and curator specializing in global modern and contemporary art and the history and theory of photography. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon during the 2024-2025 academic year, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on modern art in a global context. She received a Ph.D. in Art History from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, with a dissertation about photography in the Soviet Union. At Rutgers, she taught undergraduate courses on twentieth-century photography and contemporary photography. Her research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and P.E.O. Foundation. As a Dodge Avenir Fellow at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, New Jersey, from 2018 to 2023, she researched the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, and curated the 2021 exhibition “Communism Through the Lens: Everyday Life Captured by Women Photographers in the Dodge Collection.” Her research publications have appeared in the Journal of Russian American Studies, Journal of Avant-Garde Studies, Proceedings of the National Library of Latvia, and SEQUITUR. She earned an M.A. in Art History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.F.A. in Visual Art: Photography from Boise State University.

Publications

“George Kennan’s Photography Collection of Political Exiles in Labor Camps of Late Imperial Siberia.” Journal of Russian American Studies, 6.2 (2022), 120–145. https://doi.org/10.17161/jras.v6i2.18630.

“Issues, Challenges, and Insights: Art Historical Research on Latvian Art and Photography at the Zimmerli Art Museum (USA).” Proceedings of the National Library of Latvia, 9.29 (2022): 42-57. https://dom.lndb.lv/data/obj/1055522.html.

“Soviet Avant-Gardes and Socialist Realism: Women Photographers Bridging the Divide, 1930s-1960s.” Journal of Avant-Garde Studies, 1.2 (2022): 188-220. https://doi.org/10.1163/25896377-00102002.

Communism Through the Lens: Everyday Life Captured by Women Photographers in the Dodge Collection. New Brunswick, NJ: Zimmerli Art Museum, 2021. https://www.academia.edu/50138532/Communism_Through_the_Lens_Everyday_Life_Captured_by_Women_Photographers_in_the_Dodge_Collection.

“Painting, Photography, and Radical Depictions of Gender: Franz Gertsch and Lissa Rivera.” SEQUITUR Vol. 6, Issue 1 (Fall 2019). 
http://www.bu.edu/sequitur/2019/11/30/painting-photography-and-radical-depictions-of-gender-franz-gertsch-and-lissa-rivera/.

Teaching

ARH 440/540 Museology

ARH 353 Modern Art 1880-1950

ARH 399 Special Studies Modern Art

ARH 453/553 Topics in Global Modern Art

Updated

Member for

2 months