Recent Trends in Contemporary Art: David Getsy

Undetectability: Scott Burton’s sculpture and public art in the first decade of the AIDS crisis

David J. Getsy writes about modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on queer and transgender themes and methods. His books include Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender; Queer (Documents of Contemporary Art); Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture; Body Doubles: Sculpture in Britain, 1877–1905; and, forthcoming in 2022, Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art. He is currently writing a book based on the retrospective exhibition Rubbish and Dreams: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble, which he curated for the Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York. A satellite exhibition, The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Photographs by Greg Day, recently concluded its run at its fourth venue, the Schwules Museum Berlin. He was awarded the 2022 Award for Distinction from the College Art Association for the best article published in Art Journal in 2021 (for “A Syllabus on Transgender and Nonbinary Methods for Art and Art History,” co-authored with Che Gossett). He teaches at the University of Virginia, where he is the Eleanor Shea Professor of Art History.