Shawn C. Simmons is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests center on modern and contemporary art, with a focus on museological critique, queer and feminist art histories, archival studies, and visual cultures of science and technology. His current research project examines how artists engage institutional aesthetics to question how museums construct history and cultural memory. He holds a B.A. in Art History from New York University and an M.A. in Art History from the University of Colorado Boulder. As a 2023 Rough Gems curatorial fellow at Union Hall (Denver), he curated Against Nature, a group exhibition featuring artists across the U.S. working with themes of queer ecology.
Shawn is a regular contributor to publications including Petrichor and TABLE, where his writing focuses on contemporary art in and around Pittsburgh.
- Ph.D., History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, in progress
- M.A., Art History, University of Colorado Boulder, 2023
- B.A., Art History, New York University, 2020
Education & Training
- Marstine Fellowship for Research and Public Engagement, 2025
- Dietrich Summer Research Grant, 2024
- Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 2023-2024
- Archival Research Fellowship, Ellsworth Kelly Studio, 2023
- Hazel Barnes Grant, Center for Humanities and the Arts, University of Colorado Boulder, 2023
- Rough Gems Curatorial Fellowship, Union Hall Gallery, Denver, 2022-2023
“On Disciplinary Disrepair: Editor’s Introduction”. Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture 10 (1): i-iv, 2025.
“At the Tomayko Foundation, four artists seek the divine in the everyday.” Petrichor, 2025 (exhibition review).
“Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art.” SEQUITUR, Issue 10, Volume 2, 2024 (book review).
“Seen and not looked at: Jasper Johns’s Embodied Geography.” Constellations blog, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, 2025.
