Megan Sullivan

Megan Sullivan is an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, specializing in modern and contemporary Latin American art. She is affiliated with the Center for Latin American Studies and serves as co-editor of ArtMargins (MIT Press).

Her research centers on Latin American modernism, with deep expertise in abstraction, craft practices, popular culture, and the relationship between aesthetic modernism and social/economic modernization outside the North Atlantic. She critically examines how indigenous and vernacular elements intersect with modern art, particularly in Peru, as seen in her analysis of artists like Lygia Clark and the Vargas brothers.

Sullivan's publications reveal consistent engagement with tensions between high art and popular forms, abstraction and representation, and global-local dynamics. Her book Radical Form: Modernist Abstraction in South America (2022) and current Dedalus Fellowship-funded project on Peruvian modernism demonstrate her focus on decolonizing art history through indigenous perspectives.

Scientific Awards:

• 2023 Dedalus Senior Fellowship

She received the Dedalus Senior Fellowship for her book project Twentieth-Century Peruvian Art: Episodes in a History of Modernism and its Others and co-organized the international workshop Forging a History of Modern Art from the Andes with Ana Franco (Universidad de los Andes) in 2022.