Janet Kraynak

Postwar and Contemporary Art, Politics of Media, Globalization
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001

Prof. Kraynak writes and teaches about the history and theory of modern and contemporary art, focusing upon the transformation of the artistic object in relation to larger socio-political developments. In addition to the core MODA Colloquia––in method and museum/curatorial history and theory––she teaches advanced graduate seminars on select topics, including performance, globalization, digitization, and decolonization, among others.

Kraynak’s research examines the emergence of non-traditional mediums at moments of crisis and upheaval: from the revolutionary 1960s; the post-1989 period with the emergence of globalization; to the rise of a digitally mediated public sphere. With an interest in the interdisciplinary turn in the production and reception of art, Kraynak's scholarship traces the transformation of performance strategies in the visual arts, and the emergence of digitization as a social and political form, raising methodological questions that challenge received histories. She is the author of numerous books, including Contemporary Art and The Digitization of Everyday Life (University of California Press, 2020), for which she was awarded The Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant; Nauman Reiterated (University of Minnesota Press 2014); Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman's Words: Writings and Interviews (MIT Press, 2003); the Survey in Monica Bonvicini (Phaidon Press, 2014), and Jon Pestoni: Family Plot (David Kordansky Gallery and the Cleveland Museum of Art, 2016). Her latest book, The Rise of the Therapeutic Museum: Decolonization and the Crisis of Knowledge is being published by Routledge in their series, Routledge Research in Art Museums and Exhibitions (forthcoming, 2025).

Kraynak has written articles and delivered papers on a range of artists including Faith Ringgold, Glenn Ligon, Philippe Parreno, Rosemarie Trockel, Do-Ho Suh and Rirkrit Tiravanija, among others. As a scholar and critic, her writings have appeared in Art Journal, 4Columns, Grey Room, Artforum, Frieze, and The Journal of Visual Culture among other publications. She has lectured widely at such venues as the Getty Research Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Institute for Aesthetic Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark, among others.

Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia, Kraynak was at the New School in New York for nine years, where she was Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History. Formerly faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and Purchase College, SUNY, where she was the acting Director of the MA/MFA Program in Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory, Kraynak has a longstanding pedagogical interest in curatorial studies and the history and theory of exhibitions. She has curated several exhibitions, is the former New York/International Field Editor for Exhibitions: Modern and Contemporary at caa.reviews, and had a longstanding relationship with the Whitney Museum of American Art, including as Teaching Fellow. Kraynak also served on the Editorial Board of Art Journal, and is the recipient of the 2010 Art Journal Award of Distinction, for her article, "'The Land' and the Economics of Sustainabilty."

Contemporary Art and The Digitization of Everyday Life, University of California Press (2020).

“How to Hear What is Not Heard: Glenn Ligon, Steve Reich and the Audible Past,” Grey Room 70 (Winter, 2018): 54-79.

"‘Therapeutic‘ Participation: On the Legacy of Nauman’s Yellow Room and Other Works,“ in Practicable: from Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art, Samuel Bianchini and Erik Verhagen (eds.), MIT Press (2016).

Nauman Reiterated (Electronic Mediations series, University of Minnesota Press 2014).

"Survey," in Monica Bonvicini (Phaidon Press, 2014).

"Rosemarie Trockel and the Body of Society, " The Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 13 no. 2 August, 2014): 139-167.

"The Land and the Economics of Sustainability," Art Journal, vol. 69, no. 4, (Winter, 2010): 16-25. Reprinted in Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics, ed. Emily Eliza Scott and Kirsten Swenson (Oakland, CA: University of California Press), 2015: 203-217.

"Art History's Present Tense," in Elizabeth Mansfield, ed. Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and Its Institutions (London and New York: Routledge), 2007: 83-101.

"Nan Goldin's Witnesses Against Our Vanishing: Representation, Cultural Politics, and the 1980's," in Rhea Anastas and Michael Brenson (eds.) A Witness to Her Art (Bard College), 2006.

Please Pay Attention Please: Bruce Nauman's Words: Writings and Interviews (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).