Alumni Careers

Annika Johnson (PhD 2019) 

In August 2019, Annika Johnson began her position as Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, NE. As the museum’s first full-time curator of Native American art, Annika’s job encompasses a broad range of projects. She is gathering data on the approximately 1,600 Native artworks in the collection that range from historic Lakota beaded regalia and Inuit carvings to contemporary pieces by Roxanne Swentzell and Arthur Amiotte. In partnership with Native community leaders, Annika will spend the next few years planning a permanent installation of the Native American art collection and related progrmaming. She is also developing rotating exhibitions with contemporary artists, and continues to pursue research completed for her PhD on Dakota art during the reservation era.

Henry Skerritt (PhD 2017)

In fall 2016, Henry Skerritt was appointed curator of the  indigenous arts of Australia at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal  Art Collection of the University of Virginia. During 2016, he curated two touring exhibitions: Yimardoowarra: Artist of the River, which opened at the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C., before traveling to the Kluge-Ruhe, and Marking the Infinie, which opened at the Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University before traveling to fie museums in the United States and Canada. Skerritt edited the accompanying exhibition catalog for Marking the Infinie, published through Prestel Publishing, and also contrib-uted an essay to the catalog accompanying the exhibition  Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia, which opened at the Harvard Art Museums in February.

Yuki Morishima (PhD 2013)

Dr. Yuki Morishima currently serves as Associate Curator of Japanese Art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Morishima received undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington and a M.S. from Boston University. She earned both her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the University of Pittsburgh where she specialized in portraits of Japanese emperors. Prior to joining the Asian Art Museum, Morishima taught as a visiting instructor and a teaching fellow at the University of Pittsburgh.

Since coming to the Asian Art Museum, Morishima has curated a number of exhibitions, including Japanese Lacquerware (2015-2016); Tradition on Fire: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Paul and Kathy Bissinger Collection (2014); and Tetsuya Ishida: Saving the World with a Brushstroke (2014). Morishima also assisted with other exhibitions such as Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh, and Other Western Artists (2015), Seduction: Japan’s Floating World (2015), and The Printer’s Eye: Ukiyo-e from the Grabhorn Collection (2015). Her recently published writings include “Portrait of Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Recognition and Commemoration in a Japanese Portrait” in Orientations (in English and translated into Chinese, 2016) and “The Printer’s Eye: Ukiyo-e from the Grabhorn Collection” (2015) and “Tradition on Fire: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Paul and Kathy Bissinger Collection” (2014) in The Asian Art Museum Magazine.

Morishima’s current projects include researching and writing for Selected Works: A Guide to the Asian Art Museum Collection, reinstalling the Japan galleries, and researching modern Japanese crafts for an upcoming exhibition in 2019.

Cristina Albu (PhD 2012)

Cristina Albu’s research focuses on interconnections between contemporary art, phenomenology, and cognitive sciences. She is currently working on a project concerning contemporary artists’ strategic use of biofeedback technology to cultivate awareness of the complex biological and social systems in which we are entangled. Cristina is the author of Mirror Affect: Seeing Self, Observing Others in Contemporary Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). She is also co-editor with Dawna Schuld (Texas A&M University) of a volume of essays titled Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art (forthcoming with Routledge in 2017).

Studying in the HAA department gave me the chance to be part of a lively academic community, highly supportive of daring ideas, interdisciplinary scholarship, and collaborative ventures. Above all, this experience inspired me to study and teach art history in a global context by taking into account cross-cultural exchanges of ideas, materials, and techniques. The collegial atmosphere in the department helped me pursue my research goals assiduously. It also helped me develop new professional skills necessary for editing journals and organizing conferences. I couldn’t have asked for better scholarly advice from a whole group of dedicated art historians who enabled me to acquire a good grasp of multiple methodologies and critical theories, which have come to inform my scholarship.

Robert Bailey (PhD 2012)

After receiving a B.A. (2005), M.A. (2007), and Ph.D. (2012) in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of Pittsburgh, where I also studied philosophy and studio art, I have taken a job as Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma with affiliate faculty status in Film and Media Studies. During my twelve years as a student at Pitt, I benefitted enormously from studying closely with committed HA&A faculty who maintained the intellectually rigorous and sophisticated environment in which I acquired the knowledge and skills that I now put to regular use as a scholar and teacher.

Today, my research covers the history of modern and contemporary art as well as the historiography and methodology of art history. Broadly speaking, that work focuses on how artists and art historians configure relations of theory and practice amidst broader artistic, intellectual, and political developments. I have examined conceptual art and conceptualism, resulting in two books published with Duke University Press: a monograph titled Art & Language International: Conceptual Art between Art Worlds and a volume of Terry Smith’s writings that I edited and introduced, One and Five Ideas: On Conceptual Art and Conceptualism.

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