Biography

Peter Chametzky is Professor of Art History, and has been on the SVAD faculty since 2012. His research focuses on 20th and 21st century German art and culture. 

From 1998 to 2012 he taught at Southern Illinois University, first as Associate Professor and then as Professor, and served as Director of the School of Art and Design on the Carbondale campus from 2008-12. He served as Director of the UofSC SVAD from 2013-2018. Previously, he taught at Adelphi University (1990-98), the School of Visual Arts (1984-88), and in the School of Continuing Education at New York University (1986-88). He earned his Ph.D. in Art History from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1991. His B.A., also in Art History, is from Cornell University. He has also studied in Freiburg iBr, and Stuttgart, Germany.

Courses

Peter teaches courses in 20^th and 21^st Century art, theory, and culture, as well the art history survey, ARTH 105 and ARTH 106. 

Recent Publications (since 2018)

Book

• Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021).Published with the support of a Millard Meiss Publication Fund grant from the College Art Association.  Honorable Mention (sole recipient), Art History, Hans and Lea Grundig Prize, 2021.

Journal Article

• “’Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art’: An Introduction,” The Massachusetts Review (60^th Anniversary Issue), vol. 60/4 (Winter 2019): 655-681.

Book Chapters

• “Altars to Ambition: The Triptych Revival in Late Weimar and National Socialist Germany,” Aesthetics in Transition: Visual Culture in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, ed. Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Donna West Brett (volume being peer reviewed for Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2022-23).
• “Die Montage leben und sterben und ihr widerstehen,” Montage oder Fake News, ed. Angela Lammert (Berlin: Akademie der Künste & Steidl Verlag, 2021), 68-74.
• “From Anti-Nazi Postcards to Anti-Trump Social Media: Laughter as Resistance, Opposition, or Cold Comfort?” Art and Resistance in Germany, ed. Deborah Ascher Barnstone and Elizabeth Otto (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 193 – 216.

Exhibition Catalogue Essays

• “Germanness,” essay commissioned for catalogue of exhibition, Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation, ed. Lynette Roth, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, 2024.
• “Paul Westheim and Mexico: The Art Critic as Cosmopolitan” (revised version of 2001 Oxford Art Journal article) and “Anna Seghers and Mexico”, From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, organized by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, March 23 – August 29, 2022 (in press). https://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/posada-isotype-kollwitz-catlett
• "Willi Baumeister,” in Kunst für Keinen/Art for No One, 1933-1945, ed, Ilka Voermann, exh. cat. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt aM (Munch: Hirmer Verlag, 2022), 60-65.

Book Review

• Claudia Fontaine Chidester, Trusted Eye: Post-World War II Adventures of a Fearless Art Advocate (Fontaine Archive 2021), Information and Culture (University of Texas Press), Spring 2023.

Art Magazine Criticism

• “Telling Their Stories: ‘ArtFields’, Lake City, South Carolina, 2021,” New Art Examiner, vol. 35, no. 4 (July 2021): 27-30, and online.

Interviews

• „Türkler, Yahudiler ve öteki Almanlar’a özgu(n) sanat tarihi,“ [„Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art“], Interview with Peter Chametzky by Evrim Altug, Art Unlimited (Istanbul), March/April 2022: 70-74.

Other

• “On Willi Baumeister and His Cosmic Gesture,” “CMA Story,” Short essay posted to Columbia Museum of Art website, October 26, 2018.

Invited Presentations (since 2018) 

• “Where am I? As if in a dream...Did we arrive?”, Third Tri-Annual Lovis Corinth Colloquium on German Modernism, “Spaces + Place,” Art History Department, Emory University, October 21-22, 2022 (proceedings to be published by Brill Press). 
• “Articulation, Desintegration: Thoughts on German Art and Hybrid Identities, Nine Months after the publication of Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art,” Rootless: The Loyal Other? Making and Breaking Jewish Identity Today, with Max Czollek and Haim Sokol, Yiddishland Pavilion, 59^th Venice Biennale, organized by Maria Veits and Yevgeniy Fiks, August 17, 2022 (online), https://yiddishlandpavilion.art/theloyalother/ 
• “Surrealism,” Photo Society of South Carolina, Columbia, fall 2021. 
• “Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art,” ETH, Zürich, Switzerland; Galerie Knecht und Burster, Karlsruhe, Germany; Kunstraum München, Munich, Germany; Basis, Frankfurt aM; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, December 2021. 
• “Living and Dying and Resisting Montage,” pdf of essay, responses to questions, and short videos, online symposium Goodbye Photomontage, in connection with exhibition, John Heartfield. Photography Plus Dynamite, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, summer 2020.  
• “Since 1989: New Art in a Multicultural Germany,” lectured sponsored by Columbia World Affairs Council and UofSC Global Studies Program as part of 30^th-anniversary of German reunification commemoration, Columbia, SC, October 9, 2019.  
• Keynote address: “Who Represents Germany? Introducing Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art” at Community: Public, Private, Patron, and Spectator the 5^th Annual Symposium in Art History, Organized by The Art Student Graduate Organization of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, September 7, 2019 
• “How Mural Matters for Modernism and Modernity,” public lecture on the occasion of the Columbia Museum of Art’s exhibition of Jackson Pollock’s Mural, April 23, 2019.  
• “Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art,” Art History Seminar, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, November 7, 2018.