Juli Carson

Juli Carson is a Professor of Art and Director of University Art Galleries at the University of California, Irvine, within the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. She previously held the Philippe Jabre Professorship at the American University of Beirut (2018-2019), where she curated exhibitions blending psychoanalysis and contemporary art. Her research focuses on intersections of psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and conceptual art, with major publications including Exile of the Imaginary (2007), The Hermeneutic Impulse (2019), and Mary Kelly’s Concentric Pedagogy (2024).

Carson directs UCI’s Critical and Curatorial Area, overseeing exhibitions at the University Art Galleries and Catalyst Gallery. She curates projects like caesura—a moment in time, again rubbed smooth (2018-2019) and maintains pharmakon.art, a platform for artist-scholar dialogues. Her work interrogates institutional frameworks, cultural memory, and feminist art practices.

Recent exhibitions include collaborations with artists like Adrià Julià, Jane and Louise Wilson, and Cog*nate Collective. Her writings critically engage postcolonial theory, neoliberal cultural economies, and curatorial ethics. She earned a PhD in Art History from MIT and has been a key figure in redefining contemporary art education and curatorial praxis.

Grants and institutional roles include leadership in UCI’s Institute and Museum of California Art. Her scholarship bridges academic critique with activist art, addressing urgent socio-political themes through interdisciplinary frameworks.