Nora Annesley Taylor

Nora Annesley Taylor is the Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She holds a BA from Brown University (1984) and MA/PhD from Cornell University (1997). Her research focuses on contemporary art in Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam and Singapore, emphasizing art historiography, performance art, and artists' engagements with historical archives. She has curated notable exhibitions like Changing Identity: Recent Work by Women Artists from Vietnam (2005–2009) and Post-War Vietnamese Art (2016). Taylor has served as Chair of the Art History, Theory and Criticism Department (2018–2021) and received awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship (2014–2015) and Getty Collaborative Research Award (2009). Her teaching covers Buddhist Art, Colonialism, and Indian Art, challenging Eurocentric narratives. She advises MA theses exploring themes like queer lenses in Zarina’s work and digital 3D museum applications. Taylor collaborates with artists like Danh Vo and contributes to global dialogues on Southeast Asian art’s transnational ecologies.

• Education: BA Brown (1984), MA/PhD Cornell (1997)
• Key Roles: Department Chair (2018–2021), SAIC Faculty of the Year (2011)
• Exhibitions Curated: 12,756.3 by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba (2009), Blue Memory: Tran Trong Vu (2004)
• Grants/Awards: Fulbright Scholar, Asian Cultural Council, Rockefeller-Joiner Center

Her research bridges art’s political and historical dimensions, with recent work analyzing Vietnamese artists’ responses to colonialism and post-war globalization. Publications include Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art (2004) and co-edited volumes on Southeast Asian art histories.