Erin L. McCutcheon

Biography

Erin L. McCutcheon is an Assistant Professor of Arts of the Americas in the Department of Art and Art History. She earned a Ph.D. in Art History and Latin American Studies and a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Tulane University. Prior to joining URI in 2022, she directed the Art History program at Lycoming College (2019-2022) where she received the 2021 Junior Faculty Teaching Award. She is currently a mentor for AWARE (Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions), an international archive that supports training a new generation of scholars attentive to issues of gender and the position of artists who are women in history.

Her courses at URI feature an interdisciplinary and socially engaged investigation of art’s histories through the lenses of gender, sexualities, race, ethnicity, class, colonialism, and histories of uneven development. She often has students collaborate with artists and activist collectives in ways that demonstrate the ability of art to make a meaningful impact on the world.

Research

Dr. McCutcheon is an art historian of modern and contemporary art whose research and writing focus on histories of Latin American art, feminist artistic practices, and their connections with activist histories, in particular those in Mexico. Her research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed 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
Courses Offered
 
Introduction to Art History; American Art; Art, Activism, and Social Change in Latin America; Museum Studies: Histories and Practices; Women in Art; Art, Race, and American Identities (Spring 2025)
 

Selected Publications

“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).

“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

“The Feminist Logic of ‘Retrocollectivity’: a Conversation with Mónica Mayer and Karen Cordeiro Reiman.” #ERRATA 17 (2018): 188–204.

“Dis/Appearance: Self-Portraiture in the Work of Mónica Mayer.” Si tiene dudas… pregunte: a Retrocollective Exhibition of the Work of Mónica Mayer, edited by Karen Cordero Reiman (Mexico City: UNAM, 2016) pp. 130–138.

“Drawing Time: Mónica Mayer’s Two-Dimensional Performances.” Si tiene dudas… pregunte: a Retrocollective Exhibition of the Work of Mónica Mayer, edited by Karen Cordero Reiman (Mexico City: UNAM, 2016) pp. 138–145.

“Tales We Tell: Imagining Feminist Pasts, Writing Feminist Futures.” Nierika: Revista de estudios de arte 10 (2016): 60–76. https://doi.org/10.48102/nierika.vi10.339

“Feminism Unfolding: Negotiating In/Visibility of Mexican Feminist Aesthetic Practices within Contemporary Exhibitions.” Artelogie 5 (2013). https://doi.org/10.4000/artelogie.5668