Alex Zivkovic

Alex is a Ph.D. candidate studying modern art and the history of photography, with a focus on French empire and ecological art history. His dissertation examines the role of greenhouses, aquariums, and colonial gardens as imperial propaganda in French art and mass culture (c. 1860-1940). Broadly, his various research projects and publications consider how ecologies, animals, and media interact—across surrealist installations, taxidermy sculptures, silent film, and video art, for example. He previously worked as a project research assistant for SFMOMA’s René Magritte: The Fifth Season (2018) and wrote two catalogue essays accompanying Remedios Varo: Science Fictions (2023) at the Art Institute of Chicago.

His dissertation research has been supported by the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, the Stanford-Leuphana Summer Academy, Dumbarton Oaks, DFK Paris, and others. At Columbia, Alex completed two interdisciplinary graduate certificates through the Center for Comparative Media and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender. In 2023–2024, Alex will teach the undergraduate seminar “Ecology, Art, and Empire” as a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Scholar. He was also the recipient of the 2022 Core Preceptor Award for Excellence in Teaching Art Humanities. Alex graduated from Stanford University in 2017, receiving a B.A. with distinction in Art History (with honors) and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Selected Publications

“Leonor Fini’s Surrealist Object and Other Marvelous Precipitates of Desire” Modernism/modernity Print Plus, Visualities Forum (2023)

“Expanded Vitrines: Museological Sculptures and Diasporic Identity,” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 51, no. 1 (May 2023)

“Joan Jonas’s Ecological Portraits: Echo and Narcissus,” Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism 49, no. 1 (March 2022): 63–87.