Isolde A. Brielmaier

BIOGRAPHY

Scholar and curator Isolde Brielmaier is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies in the Department of Photography, Imaging and Emerging Media at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Isolde’s areas of scholarly interest include: global visual culture; race, gender, class studies; social media; technology (new and trans media); contemporary patronage and artistic practice, and the on-going dynamic between art, artists and the international art market as well as the public and private sectors. Throughout her curatorial career, she has collaborated with noted contemporary artists including Ellen Gallagher, Carrie Mae Weems, Uta Barth, Leonardo Drew, Richard Mosse, Fred Wilson, and Bharti Kher, to name a few. Isolde has written extensively on contemporary art and culture, including numerous exhibition catalogue essays, journal articles, reviews as well as artist books including the first monographs on photographers Zwelethu Mthetwa (Aperture, 2010) and Hector Acebes (University of Washington Press, 2004). She has also developed contemporary art and culture initiatives for the Prospect New Orleans Biennial, the Armory Show/VOLTA NY, and ARCO Contemporary Art Fair in Madrid, Spain, among others. 

Isolde has taught previously at Vassar College and Columbia University/Barnard College and currently serves as consulting Director of Arts & Culture at Westfield World Trade Center. Isolde has also worked for the Guggenheim Museum, the Bronx Museum of Art, and as Chief Curator for the SCAD Museum of Art.  She serves on several boards and is deeply committed to the promotion of arts education, global women’s issues and criminal justice reform. In October of 2015, Isolde was invited as a guest to the White House on the occasion of President Obama’s declaration of National Juvenile Justice month. Among her distinctions, she has received fellowships from the Mellon and Ford foundations as well as the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).