Erin L. McCutcheon

Biography

Erin L. McCutcheon is an art historian whose research focuses on modern and contemporary Latin American art, feminist artistic practices, and their connections with activist histories. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Latin American Studies from Tulane University and is currently the Assistant Professor of Arts of the Americas at the University of Rhode Island. Prior to joining the faculty at URI, she directed the Art History program at Lycoming College and held positions in curatorial departments at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Henry Moore Institute. She is involved in feminist advocacy in the arts and in 2025 was appointed to the College Art Association’s Committee on Women in the Arts. She is also a member of the AWARE (Archive of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions) TEAM network dedicated to creating resources and training a new generation of scholars sensitive to gender issues in art history. She is an award-winning teacher (Lycoming College, 2021; University of Rhode Island, 2024) and has contributed lesson plans to the 2025 Art History and Gender Teaching Resources initiative sponsored by the Judy Chicago Art Education Award. Her courses at URI use socially engaged methods that put students in touch with artists, activists, galleries, and museums while fostering their ability to make a meaningful impact in their community.

Research

Dr. McCutcheon is an art historian whose research, writing, and curatorial practice focus on modern and contemporary Latin American art, feminist artistic practices, and their connections with activist histories. Her writing has appeared in several notable journals, edited collections, and exhibition catalogues, including the catalogue for Si tiene dudas… pregunte: una exposición retrocolectiva de Mónica Mayer (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, 2016), for which she served as a curatorial research assistant. Her current book project examines the intersections between art, the women’s movement, and motherhood in post-1968 Mexico City and has been supported by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. This publication will offer new perspectives for the study of artists both within and beyond the borders of Latin America by establishing the artistic and activist potentialities of the role of artist/mother and its critical significance to art’s histories.

Education

  • Ph.D., Tulane University, 2021
  • M.A., University of Leeds, 2010
  • B.A., Boston College, 2005
 

Selected Publications

“Polvo de Gallina Negra and the Politics of Pregnant Performance in Mexico,” Art Journal 84, no. 3 (2025): 82-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2025.2554205

“Teaching Across and Beyond the Waves: Mónica Mayer and the Generative Legacies of Feminist Artistic Pedagogy in Mexico.” Pedagogical Art in Activist and Curatorial Practices, edited by Izabel Galliera and Noni Brynjolson (Routledge, 2025), 33–46. https://www.routledge.com/Pedagogical-Art-in-Activist-and-Curatorial-Practices/Galliera-Brynjolson/p/book/9781032748528

“Performative Resurrections: Necropublics and the Work of Guadalupe García-Vásquez.” In The New Public Art: Collectivity and Activism in Mexico since the 1980s, edited by Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra (University of Texas Press, 2023). https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477327623/

“Monumental Interventions: Feminism, Art, and Public Resistance in Mexico.” AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. December 23, 2022. https://awarewomenartists.com/en/magazine/interventions-monumentales-feminisme-art-et-resistance-publique-au-mexique/

“When in Doubt… Ask: Feminists Take on the Museum Retrospective.” OnCurating 52 (November, 2021): 172–183. https://www.on-curating.org/issue-52-reader/when-in-doubt-ask-feminists-take-on-the-museum-retrospective.html

Erin L. McCutcheon and Corrie Boudreaux, “The Craftivist Classroom: Embodied Approaches to CESL with Bordeamos por la paz.” H-ART: Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte 6 (2020): 205–232. https://doi.org/10.25025/hart06.2020.11