Welcome Dr. Jonah Westerman

Jonah Westerman joins the faculty as assistant professor of art history. Previously, for the 2016–17 academic year, he was the Chester Dale Senior Fellow in Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Arts and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Researcher at Tate in London, from 2014 to 2016. He received a PhD in art history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a BA from Harvard University.

Westerman’s research focuses on global histories of performance since the mid-twentieth century with an emphasis on how artists have sought to renew art’s social role and critical capabilities. He is especially interested in practices that probe the boundary between art and life through experimental approaches to embodied and durational experience, intermedial processes of production, and audience participation.

 “I’m absolutely delighted to be joining the at history department and the larger Purchase community. To be part of a campus that so dearly values artistic practice is a deep privilege for an art historian, and I can’t wait to work with students and faculty members across the college in pursuing how the ways we see art, talk about it, and use it can help us to understand our histories and create new futures.”

Westerman joined the art history program at Purchase College in August 2017.