Jason Rosenfeld

Title

Distinguished Chair and Professor of Art History

Department

Art and Art History

Email

jrosenfeld@mmm.edu

Phone

212-517-0677

About

Jason Rosenfeld has been a member of the faculty at MMC since fall 2003. Dr. Rosenfeld received his B.A. from Duke University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with a dissertation titled New Languages of Nature in Victorian England: The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape, Natural History and Modern Architecture in the 1850s. He has previously taught at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, New York University, and Queens College, City University of New York. Academic interests include contemporary art and issues in figuration and landscape, nineteenth-century European art, British art, specifically Victorian and the Pre-Raphaelites, art and architecture in New York City, and modern architecture.

He is also Senior Writer and Editor-at-Large at The Brooklyn Rail, and has been a contributor of reviews, essays, and interviews since June 2016. For The Brooklyn Rail New Social Environment Series, he has conducted Zoom interviews with Cecily Brown, Matvey Levenstein, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Julie Curtiss, Martin Puryear, Shahzia Sikander, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Andy Goldsworthy, Wayne Thiebaud, and Peter Saul.

His book on the British-born, New York-based painter, Cecily Brown, was published by Phaidon Press in November 2020.

His interview with Cecily Brown is in the catalogue to the exhibition “Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium,” held at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, 6 February - 30 August 2020.

He wrote a catalogue titled “Thresholds of Perceptibility: The Color Field Paintings of Leon Berkowitz” for an exhibition at Hollis Taggart Gallery in October-November, 2019.

He wrote the catalogue for an exhibition of Stephen Hannock’s recent paintings, “The Oxbow, from Thomas Cole to Alfred Hitchcock,” seen at Marlborough Fine Art Ltd. in London in June and July of 2018.

His most recent curatorial project was “Ben Wilson: From Social Realism to Abstraction,” an exhibition on the work of the American abstract painter, Wilson (1913-2001) at the George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, the first comprehensive show of the work of this undiscovered artist.

He also contributed an essay titled “Insta-scapes” for an exhibition of contemporary landscape painting at the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery in the summer of 2016, the catalogue for Bill Scott’s show at Hollis Taggart Galleries in 2016, and the exhibition River Crossings, held at the historic homes of Thomas Cole (Cedar Grove in Catskill, NY), and Frederic Edwin Church (Olana in Hudson, NY), and featuring contemporary art in these spaces for the first time. The exhibition was co-curated with the painter Stephen Hannock. It has been featured in the New York Timesthe Wall Street Journal, and CBS Sunday Morning, and ran from May 3 - November 1, 2015. The accompanying catalog is published by The Artist Book Foundation.

Recent research interests have revolved around the life and career of the Victorian painter Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and his monograph on that artist for Phaidon Press Ltd. was published in 2012. He co-curated the major exhibition on Millais at Tate Britain, London, the National Gallery of British Art, with Alison Smith, Senior Curator of Paintings, which traveled to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, followed by venues in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan. The exhibition was seen by in excess of 660,000 visitors. His most recent co-curated exhibition is “Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde,” seen by 242,000 at Tate Britain from September 11, 2012 to January 13, 2013, the second most heavily attended exhibition in that institution’s history. The show drew 251,000 visitors at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (February 17 – May 19, 2013), and has most recently been seen at the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia (June 11 – October 13, 2013) and the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo, Japan (January 25 – April 6, 2014). Its final venue was the Palazzo Chiablese in Torino, Italy (April 19 - July 13, 2014). Here is an introduction to one of the key works in the show – Millais’s Isabella (1848-9). He was a consultant on the exhibition The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and Design held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 20 - October 26, 2014. 

He has published many articles and reviews on British art and architecture and contemporary art, writes criticism for The Brooklyn Rail, and was a frequent reviewer for Art in America. He was a co-curator of the exhibition “The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print” at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, in 1995, and contributed to the “Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection” exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2003. He also contributed an essay to the catalogue of Marcel Dzama’s exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery, New York, in 2005. In addition, he has been the lead contributor on a monograph on the contemporary American artist, Stephen Hannock, published by Hudson Hills Press in the summer of 2009 and curated an exhibition of Hannock’s new work at Marlborough Gallery, New York (April 25 – June 2, 2012), a version of which traveled to London (February 4 - March 1, 2014). He has also written the catalogue for South African artist Lionel Smit’s exhibition at Rook & Raven Gallery, London (March 21 - April 30, 2014).

Degree(s)

B.A., Art History and Economics, cum laude and with Distinction in Art History, Duke University

M.A., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Recent Work

Reviews in The Brooklyn Rail

Stephen Hannock: The Oxbow, from Thomas Cole to Alfred Hitchcock. Ex. Cat. London: Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, 2018.

Review of “Passages through Time: Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports” at the Frick CollectionJournal 18, April 2017.

“Insta-scapes,” essay for Marlborough Chelsea Gallery, Landscapes Exhibition, June 23 - July 29, 2016.

“Bill Scott: Refulgence,” in Bill Scott: Imaging Spring, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, 2016.

River Crossings. The Artist Book Foundation, 2015.

“Crossing Paths: The Chance Meeting that Spawned ‘River Crossings’.” Apollo (online) (May 29, 2015). 

“Q&A with Jason Rosenfeld, Co-Curator of ‘River Crossings.’” Modern Painters (May 2015): 36.

“To Rival Claude: Richard Wilson at the Yale Center for British Art.” Apollo 180 (July/August 2014): 91-2.

Lionel Smit: Dialogic Cumulus. Exh. cat. London: Rook & Raven Gallery, 2014.

Stephen Hannock. Moving Water, Fleeting Light. Exh. cat. London: Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, 2014.

“Millais and the ‘luster of Titian,’” in The Reception of Titian in Britain, c. 1780-1880: Artists, Collectors, Critics. Ed. Peter Humfrey. Brepols, Turnhout, 2013.

John Everett Millais. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2012.

(co-authored with Tim Barringer and Alison Smith) Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde. Exh. cat. London: Tate Publishing, 2012 (pub. In U.S. as Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, Tate Publishing and Yale University Press).

Pre-Raphaelites. London: Tate Publishing, 2012, 80 pp.

Stephen Hannock. Recent Paintings: Vistas with Text. Exh. cat. New York: Marlborough Fine Art Ltd, 2012.

Research

PRESENTATIONS

“New Art from Old: The Pre-Raphaelites and Early Italian Painting,” National Gallery of Art, London, Arnolfini Histories: Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait and its Receptions conference, January 12-13, 2018.

“The Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Frederic Edwin Church’s Olana and American Contemporary Art,” Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware, Biggs Picture Juror Lecture, July 8, 2017.

“River Crossings: Curator’s Lecture,” Columbia-Greene Community College, May 17, 2015.

“Blaze like a Comet: William Dyce and Heavenly Perception in an Age of Uncertainty,” Science is Measurement: Nineteenth-Century Science, Art and Visual Culture, College Art Association Conference, New York, February 12, 2015.

“Pre-Raphaelites and Pop Culture,” Pre-Raphaelitism, Aestheticism and Japan Workshop, University of Tsukuba, Tokyo, January 25, 2014 and  Hosei University, Tokyo, January 26, 2014.

“Post Pre‑Raphaelitism: The Global Influence of the Victorian Avant-Garde,” The Pre-Raphaelite Society AGM and Founder’s Day Lecture, Birmingham & Midland Institute, October 19, 2013.

“The Pre-Raphaelites and International Modernism: Interlacings,” Modernisms/Modernities Symposium, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., March 8 & 9, 2013.

“Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, Conception, Exhibition, Reception,” Yale Center for British Art, with Tim Barringer, March 6, 2013.

Respondent and panelist, Medievalism, Modernity, and the Sacred in Britain and America after 1900 Symposium, Yale Center for British Art, February 23, 2013.

“Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde,” Curator’s Lecture with Tim Barringer and Diane Waggoner, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., February 17, 2013. “Pre-Raphaelites and Global Pop Culture from the 1960s to the Present,” Curator’s Talk, Tate Britain, London, January 12, 2013. “Pre-Raphaelites and Film,” International Pre-Raphaelitism Workshop, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, January 11, 2013. “Stephen Hannock: Painted VistaVisions,” Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT, September 28, 2012. English-Speaking Union, New York, “Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde,” with Tim Barringer, May 24, 2012. Architecture Lecture Series, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, “Ruskin, Pre-Raphaelitism, Historicism, Eclecticism: Toward an Architecture,” April 2, 2012. The Treasures of the Collection in Context: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Symposium, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, “John Everett Millais and the Old Masters,” February 4, 2012.

Teaching

COURSES

ART 166 Exploring the Visual Arts

ART 250 Survey of Western Art I

ART 252 Survey of Western Art II

ART 260 Sophomore Art History Seminar

ART 288 Visual Arts Abroad (trips have included London; Athens and the Peloponnese; Florence; Rome; Belgium; Southern Italy and Sicily)

ART 318 Michelangelo

ART 325 Caravaggio, Bernini, and Baroque Art in Rome

ART 355 Renaissance and Baroque Art

ART 361 Curatorial Skills Seminar

ART 362: Visual Arts Seminar: New York City

ART 380 Modern Art I: The Nineteenth Century from Neoclassicism to Post-Impressionism

ART 381 Modern Art II: The Early-Twentieth Century from Post-Impressionsim to Pop Art

ART 384 Contemporary Art (Honors Course)

ART 393 The New York School: Painters and Poets, with Jerry Williams

ART 398 The Pre-Raphaelites

ART 451 Senior Art History Seminar

NYC 101 New York City Seminar: Autumn in New York, the Arts and the City

Professional Experience

College Service, Marymount Manhattan College

Chair, Faculty Council 2013-15.

Chair, Academic Technology Group.

Member, Strategic Planning Committee.

Member, General Education Committee.

Member, Academic Advisement Research Group.

Member, Honorary Degrees Committee.

Member, Distinguished Chair Committee.

Location

Carson Hall 704

Contact

Art History Office: Carson Hall Room 704 Classroom: Carson Hall Room 703 Phone: 212 517-0677 jrosenfeld@mmm.edu