Mary K. Coffey

Mary K. Coffey is a Professor of Art History at Dartmouth College, specializing in modern Mexican visual culture, with expertise in muralism, museum studies, and cultural policy. She holds a B.A. from Indiana University and M.A./Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her work bridges U.S. and Latin American art, focusing on topics like Mexican muralism, public art controversies, and the politics of exhibition.

Her research explores transnational cultural dynamics, including essays on Mexican folk art, eugenics exhibitions, and the intersection of art with racial and national identity. Key publications include Orozco’s American Epic (2020) and How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture (2012, Morey Award winner). She contributed essays to exhibitions like Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism (2016) and Prometheus 2017 (2017).

Coffey teaches courses on contemporary art, American art and identity, and 20th-century U.S. art. Her awards include recognition for scholarly contributions to art history. She actively engages with museum curation and interdisciplinary cultural analysis.